boat is a cloud sandbox service built for AI agents, for programs and for people. A sandbox here is a persistent virtual machine: a full Ubuntu Linux computer in the cloud with SSH and SCP access, Docker inside, its own IP address, a 60 fps virtual desktop and disk-level forking from a snapshot. The company is backed by Y Combinator.
A user or an agent creates a sandbox with the boat CLI, the HTTP API or the Python and TypeScript SDKs. Docker, VS Code, Chrome, the GitHub CLI, Rust, Node.js and Bun come pre-installed, and coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex or OpenCode can run inside. Commands start a sandbox, connect by SSH, send a prompt to an agent inside, fork a sandbox from a snapshot, open the desktop and stop the machine. A stopped sandbox keeps its disk for 14 days and costs no machine time. Sandboxes run in EU regions (Germany, Finland and France).
It is a hosted service billed per second of running time by machine size, with a monthly minimum plan and a 7-day free trial.