Show HN: Boxes.dev: ditch localhost; run Claude Code and Codex in the cloud
boxes.devHi 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 - It’s 2026, but somehow everyone is still walking around with laptops cracked open or SSHing into mac minis in their garage so their agents don’t stop working. - Mobile is treated like an afterthought even though coding is just texting now We started hitting resource constraints when multiple parallel agents test their own work by running the full app locally. - We tried different products, but couldn’t find any that solved all of our pain points – so we pivoted and decided to just build the ADE we wanted for ourselves.
Boxes.dev is a desktop and mobile app that lets you run Claude Code, Codex (using your subscription!), and the full dev environment for whatever you’re building, all on remote compute. It’s similar to Conductor or the Codex desktop app, except everything is in the cloud.
We use coding agents to scan your local dev setup and port it to the cloud. Then every Claude Code/Codex thread starts from a snapshot of the full setup, with its own filesystem and compute. No more git worktrees, no more cracked-open laptops, and your coding agents can actually test their work end-to-end because they can run your full app in isolation.
We’ve mirrored the Claude Code and Codex UX to feel natural to power users, and also have a fully-featured mobile app (no handoffs or remote control), plus scheduled automations and a Slack integration.
We’re obviously biased, but we’ve been building boxes.dev with boxes.dev for months and it’s honestly been a gamechanger. It’s hard to go back once you realize how much localhost has been limiting you; based on early feedback from beta testers, we’re increasingly sure that cloud is the future of agentic coding.
We’d love for you to experience it yourselves! Would appreciate any feedback – and happy to answer any questions on this thread.
I might use this if it supported any old cloud or VPS, and was at most $10/mo. The fact that you have decided that this platform should only live in your own custom cloud is unappealing to me.
Or, open source it and let us run it on our own VPS and keep your expensive cloud for those who want to pay. As it stands would never consider it.
I really like the pricing model and focus on not shafting people by auto-sleeping when an agent is done working.
I’ve been working on an [OSS TUI](https://github.com/prettysmartdev/awman) for managing agent execution and workflows in containers (local or remotely) and would love to collaborate if you’re interested.
Maybe I’m naive but the longest single workflow I ran was maybe 15 minutes. How do you steer agents to run “overnight”? And what is the quality of such execution?
Usually coding where the closed loop evaluation takes time.
E.g code debugging
Interesting. Given that OpenAI and Anthropic are steadily moving down the stack (e.g. remote execution, Codex desktop, Claude Code integrations), how do you think about defensibility? Do you expect the labs to eventually offer a cloud-native ADE themselves, and if so, what advantage do you think an independent platform retains?
Also, do you see Boxes supporting OpenCode and self-hosted/local models in the future? If the rented machines have enough RAM and GPU access, it seems like there could be an interesting path toward a model-agnostic platform rather than being tied to the frontier labs.