Stockyard

Stockyard

Coding agent VM orchestrator. Runs coding agents in isolated VMs — Firecracker micro-VMs on Linux (with ZFS-based audit-trail snapshots), and Apple's `container` tool on macOS.

Quick Start

# Initialize stockyard
stockyard init --instance my-dev

# Start the daemon (in another terminal)
stockyardd

# Create a VM
stockyard run --name my-task --env-file .env

# Attach to the running VM
stockyard attach 

# List running tasks
stockyard list

Creating VMs

stockyard run [flags]

Flag	Default	Description
--name		Human-readable task name
--env-file		Path to .env file to include in the VM
--env		Environment variables (KEY=value, repeatable)
--cpus	2	Number of CPU cores
--memory	4G	Memory allocation
--no-tailscale	false	Skip Tailscale setup
--tailscale-auth-key		Tailscale auth key (overrides 1Password lookup)

SSH public keys from `~/.ssh/*.pub` are automatically injected into the VM.

Environment Configuration

The `--env-file` flag delivers a `.env` file into the VM at boot. The Firecracker backend ships it via the MMDS metadata service; the apple-container backend forwards it as `container run --env` flags (explicit task env overrides `.env` entries). Either way, this is the primary way to pass API keys and tokens.

Tailscale auth keys are handled separately via `--tailscale-auth-key` or automatic 1Password lookup.

Destroying Tasks

Without `--force`, `stockyard destroy` previews the selected task and does not delete anything:

stockyard destroy 

An unnamed task requires `--force`:

stockyard destroy  --force

A named task requires both `--force` and its exact name:

stockyard destroy  --force --confirm-name='my-task'

The name comparison is byte-for-byte. Existing scripts that destroy named tasks with `--force` alone now fail closed and mus