The best computer for your AI agent is already on your desk.
Asterism gives it cloud ergonomics: boot the agent into a VM on the box that never sleeps, drive it from your laptop anywhere, snapshot before you let it loose and roll back when it wrecks the place. The agent gets a disposable computer; your real one stays yours.
$ ast create dev --image ubuntu:24.04
dev stopped
$ ast up dev
dev running
guest booting; ssh on 127.0.0.1:2222 — try: ast ssh dev
$ ast ssh dev
ast@dev:~$Agents run on your metal, not on a rented one.
People keep always-on agents alive by renting a VPS — two vCPUs, no GPU, a monthly bill — while a far better machine idles at home. Asterism boots a real virtual machine on that machine instead: its own kernel, its own disk, its own user. The desktop never sleeps, so the agent never stops. The lid of your laptop has nothing to do with it.
Isolation is the part a VPS never gave you. An agent that goes wrong wrecks a copy-on-write overlay, not your home directory and not your credentials. Take a snapshot before you hand it the keys, and put the disk back the way it was when the afternoon goes badly.
# before you let it loose
ast snapshot dev clean
# after it wrecks the place
ast restore dev cleanOne computer, assembled from your scattered machines.
An instance is a durable identity — a registry record plus a disk — and every part of a computer is a component plugged into it. CPU and RAM anchor on one device; the disk follows the anchor wherever it goes, including onto a rented GPU box for an afternoon and home again. A rented cloud box is just another one of your devices.
- CPU + RAM
- Anchored on one device. Move the anchor and the instance goes with it — a reboot, not a rebuild.
- Root disk
- Co-located with the anchor, and it always follows. Only the delta travels.
- Volumes
- Served by the device that owns the data. Attach and detach at any time.
- GPU
- Attaches from the machine that has one — or you move the anchor to it.
- Egress
- Leaves through whichever device you point it at. Anchor in a datacenter, keep your home IP.
- Services
- A database on another machine, spliced in so the guest sees it on localhost.
Every part defaults to the anchor. Nothing is remote unless you asked for it.
Open source, and honest about its age.
What works today: real virtual machines on macOS, using QEMU with Hypervisor.framework acceleration. Pick Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora or Alpine from the catalog, or point at any cloud-image URL or local qcow2. Instances get copy-on-write disks, cloud-init provisioning with your SSH keys, graceful shutdown, snapshots, and a registry that survives reboots. ast talks to a local astd daemon and starts it on demand.
ast images # what you can boot
ast create dev --image debian:13
ast up dev · ast ssh dev · ast down dev
ast ls · ast status dev · ast rm dev
ast snapshot dev clean
ast restore dev cleanWhat's next: the mesh. Devices enroll with a login, find each other through a coordination service, and connect over encrypted tunnels. That is what turns “drive it from anywhere” and “attach a volume from another machine” from a design into a command — today an instance lives on the single device that created it.
How this stays alive: everything that runs on your devices is open source and works without us. The hosted coordination plane — login, the device directory, NAT traversal and relays — is what Asterism will sell. The client is not the bait; it is the product you own.