Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to GhostBox – Borrow a disposable little machine from the Global Free Tier
I built this because I was always creating machines on GH actions to test builds on different OS, and I wanted a tight CLI that could do it. I always saw Actions as this great resources and ephemeral machines you could do dev work in just were a natural way for me to work, so this grew out of that workflow. I didn't expect it to blow up, so it wasn't 100% finished when I posted it. But it should stabilize pretty quickly. Happy to know what you think and talk about it.
GhostBox is a command-line tool that provisions temporary machines on GitHub Actions for testing builds across different operating systems. Designed for developers who need ephemeral computing environments, it… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier.
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Devbox is a command-line tool that lets you easily create isolated shells and containers. You start by defining the list of packages required by your development environment, and devbox uses that definition to create an isolated environment just for your application. In practice, Devbox works similar to a package manager like yarn – except the packages it manages are at the operating-system level (the sort of thing you would normally install with brew or apt-get). See it in action: https://youtu.be/WMBaXQZmDoA
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 2DC
I've been frustrated with dependency hell and clutter on my VPS from dev, so I built Devbox: a lightweight, open-source CLI tool that spins up isolated development environments using Docker. Each project runs in its own container, but your code stays in simple flat folders on the host machine—no messing with volumes or sync issues. Environments are disposable, so you can nuke and recreate them without losing your work. Key features: - Instant setup: `devbox init my-project` and you're in a fresh env with `devbox shell`. - Configurable via JSON: Define packages, services, and more in a…
2025 · devbox.ar0.eu · its alternatives →
- 3WS
I’ve been in the MLOps space for ~10 years, and data is still the hardest unsolved open problem. Code is versioned using Git, data is stored somewhere else, and context often lives in a 3rd location like Slack or GDocs. This is why we built XetHub, a platform that enables teams to treat data like code, using Git. Unlike Git LFS, we don’t just store the files. We use content-defined chunking and Merkle Trees to dedupe against everything in history. This allows small changes in large files to be stored compactly. Read more here:…
2022 · xethub.com · its alternatives →
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Open source cloud & desktop IDE. Contribute to CodeboxIDE/codebox development by creating an account on GitHub.
2014 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Drop: a rootless Linux sandbox for developers. It isolates coding agents and third-party packages while preserving your work environment.
Sep 2026 · droprun.sh · its alternatives →
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BoxBox▲89File manager for Linux homelab and NAS-style servers
Jun 2026 · boxbox.radhey.dev · its alternatives →
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I'm excited to introduce Zerobox, a cross-platform, single binary process sandboxing CLI written in Rust. It uses the sandboxing crates from the OpenAI Codex repo and adds additional functionalities like secret injection, SDK, etc. Watch the demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZiPm9BOPCg Zerobox follows the same sandboxing policy as Deno which is deny by default. The only operation that the command can run is reading files, all writes and network I/O are blocked by default. No VMs, no Docker, no remote servers. Want to block reads to /etc? zerobox…
Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Every single day of my life since I started programming back in 2020 I open my projects through the terminal/ghostty. "cd path" + "code .". Until today I don't even know how to open vscode first then open a project from there. I usually have 3-4 vscode windows open at the same time, and I like them in separate desktops (for mac users). i gotta admit, i use 8 desktops, 3-4 for vscode, 1 for arc, 1 for docker, 1 for postman etc. So my daily routine when I turned on my mac was: (1) open ghostty; (2) cd-path+code.; (3) drag the vscode window to a desired desktop; (4) get back to the ghostty…
Aug 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hassle-free inline clojure.spec with semi-automatic generative testing and side effect detection - gnl/ghostwheel
2018 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Boxes.devfree tier, from $19/mo▲112Hi HN, we’re Nick and Drew, and we’re building boxes.dev – the first cloud-only agentic dev environment (ADE) that gives every Codex and Claude Code agent its own cloud computer. We’re two engineers who previously built Gem (co-founder/CTO and first hire), and we spent the last year coding almost exclusively using Codex and Claude Code. It’s been a huge change to how we code, and it’s been exhilarating seeing the models keep getting better – but we eventually realized that developing on localhost was holding us back: - Git worktrees are clunky to set up and use for parallelizing work -…
Jun 2026 · boxes.dev · its alternatives →
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hey guys. the other day i was migrating hosting providers and i just needed something not too heavy and convenient to spin up my backups for awhile and realised there is almost nothing out there. kimchi hasn't been updated for years and cockpit is heavy. so here's something i came up with in a couple hours because of a sudden urge, nothing fancy just basic creation with cloud init, lifecycle management and image/storage, but it's modern-ish and it compiles to a 8.4mb binary inclusive of the embedded web UI, CLI and API, and only dep is libvirt.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Sandboxes aren't enough. Give your agent a real computer and get back to building.
2017 · fly.io · its alternatives →
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Hey folks! I've been working on something on & (mostly) off for a little over a year, and picked it back up recently because of yet another related frustration at work. I've spent a lot of time ripping out git submodules from repos my teams use, but I've spent an equally large amount of time wondering why there doesn't seem to be a better option for managing arbitrary dependencies across repos in the Year of Our Lord 2024. So, I put together a really early version of such an arbitrary-dependency manager. It's called vdm, and you can find it in the linked URL above & below. I'm sharing mostly…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
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GhostCLI▲18A free AI assistant for developers who live in the terminal.
Jun 2026 · ghost-cli.eu.cc · its alternatives →
- 17
Contribute to kolodny/zerobox development by creating an account on GitHub.
2013 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 18
A dead-simple dropbox alternative using Git. Contribute to prashanthellina/pullbox development by creating an account on GitHub.
2015 · github.com · its alternatives →
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PrettyMux▲73I built PrettyMux as a native Linux terminal workspace for multitask workflows and keeping track of my agents. It’s a GTK4 app built on Ghostty/libghostty, with split panes, workspaces, vertical tabs, notifications, project-aware tabs (shows favicons/logo automatically), and an in-app browser so terminals and docs/tools can live side by side. I started it because I wanted something tmux-like for modern GUI workflows on Linux, but native and not Electron, there is cmux but only available on macos (prettymux compiles on windows and macos too but not tested for now there) It’s…
Apr 2026 · prettymux.com · its alternatives →
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A tiny "sandbox" to run untrusted code 🏖️. Contribute to craigmulligan/sandy development by creating an account on GitHub.
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Howdy all. I'm Zack :wave:. I've been thinking about the problem of misguided AI pull requests and figured I'd throw a possible solution out there for feedback. Basically, CleverCrow lets supporters give tokens to a GitHub repo (or set of issues in that repo) for the maintainers to use to build/fix stuff. The fun implementation challenges have been around implementing the pooling dynamics and keeping the maintainers in charge while the backers are motivated to support their work.
Jun 2026 · clevercrow.io · its alternatives →
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About a month ago I started a suprisingly-not-that tricky project to build an experimental python repl that I could use instead of bash as a daily shell in windows, mac or linux. It"s more hack-for-exploration than a production ready shell, but here it is! Hope somebody finds it anywhere near as interesting to check out as I found making it. Disclaimer: I know about xonsh and love it (if you haven't heard of it, google it). This project is more pure python and less python and bash interacting - see the readme for more details.
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hey HN! I built Ghostpipe because: 1. I like to keep data about my software in the codebase and under version control. 2. I don’t like always working in raw text files with domain specific languages (eg Terraform, Openapi, er diagrams). Ghostpipe is an open source tool that creates a bridge between files in your codebase and applications using webrtc. This lets developers work with user interfaces where appropriate, while still having access to the underlying raw text files. A few side-benefits to this setup are: 1. AI agents are good at working with local text files, so we can keep using…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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- Devbox – Easy, predictable shells and containers alternatives
- Devbox – Containers for better dev environments alternatives
- We scaled Git to support 1 TB repos alternatives
- Codebox - Open-source cloud and desktop IDE alternatives
- Drop – a rootless Linux sandbox with gVisor support alternatives
- BoxBox alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →