Box

Box is a sandbox platform from ASCII (ascii.dev) that provisions persistent Ubuntu Linux virtual machines for AI agents and the developers building them, rather than a container that resets between runs. Each box comes pre-configured with Docker, VS Code, Chrome, Ghostty, GitHub CLI, Rust, Node.js, and Bun, has SSH/SCP access and a dedicated IPv4 address, and supports fast disk-level forking so a snapshot of one box can spawn new instances without a slow rebuild. Access is available through a CLI (commands include "box new", "box ssh", "box prompt" for feeding a prompt directly to Claude or Codex, "box fork", and "box desktop" for a 60fps virtual-desktop view), or via an HTTP API with Python and TypeScript SDKs. Billing is per-second while a box is active, with a $20 monthly minimum that converts to roughly 555 hours on a 4 vCPU/8GB machine; stopping and snapshotting a box pauses billing. The site positions its pricing as cheaper than comparable services like E2B, GitHub Codespaces, and Modal. It targets developers and "agent factories" that need programmatic, forkable Linux environments for agent development and automation, rather than a general cloud-hosting product. Availability is currently limited to EU regions (Germany, Finland, France), which may matter for latency-sensitive or data-residency-sensitive use cases outside Europe.