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AI Tool Radar
OSI-openComputer-use and autonomous agents

forkd

deeplethe

microVM sandbox that forks isolated Linux VMs for agents from a warm snapshot in milliseconds.

2.7k stars(as of 2026-06-26)View on GitHub

What is forkd?

A microVM sandbox runtime that spawns isolated Linux environments for AI-agent workloads by forking children from a pre-warmed parent snapshot with copy-on-write memory, instead of cold-booting separate VMs. Each child is its own Firecracker process with full KVM virtualisation, network namespace and cgroup limits, and it can BRANCH a running VM mid-execution and stack diff-snapshots.

Pros & Cons

Pros

  • True hardware (KVM/Firecracker) isolation per child, not container namespaces
  • E2B-SDK-compatible Python SDK plus an MCP server lower integration friction
  • Apache-2.0 with real SDKs, tests and recipes for LangGraph, CrewAI and AutoGen

Cons

  • Self-declared Alpha: on-disk formats and APIs may change before 1.0
  • Linux x86_64 + KVM + recent kernel only (no macOS, Windows or ARM)
  • Headline latency and memory figures (~100ms for 100 children) are unverified project claims

License

Apache-2.0 (OSI-open)

When it is interesting

Fanning out many genuinely isolated Linux microVMs for agent workloads on your own KVM-capable host.

When it is too early

If you need cross-platform support, API stability, or cannot meet the Linux/KVM/kernel requirements.

Commercial alternative & related

  • Commercial counterpart: E2B

This repo featured in the 2026-07 edition of the Open-Source AI Radar.