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 – Borrow a disposable little machine from the Global Free Tier launched on May 1, 2026 with 126 votes, #216 of 20,538 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches.
In plain words
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 simplifies the workflow of creating and managing disposable machines for development and testing work. The tool leverages GitHub's free tier resources and offers a lightweight CLI interface for this purpose.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
Ghostbox siphons disposable little dev machines from GitHub Actions. SSH in, expose a port, give an agent a shell, and let the machine expire.
Borrow a disposable little machine from the Global Free Tier . SSH in. Run the thing. Do the work. Let it disappear. First time? Install the CLI or curl -fsSL https://www.ghost.charity/install.sh | bash Coding agents need a real machine: shell, repo, packages, network, preview URL, and sometimes secrets. Ghostbox gives them one that goes away. GitHub Actions is only the first place ghosts come from. There are strange little pockets of temporary compute all over the internet. Ghostbox makes them feel like one small machine. A ghost machine for the moment. Give it back when you’re done. All energy is borrowed, one day you have to give it back. Every ghost returns to the clouds. If you love…from ghost.charity
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