Overalls is Geoffrey Huntley’s self-hosted, MIT-licensed platform of persistent Firecracker microVM development machines, the renamed Weaving Loom, opening as a research preview on 3 November 2026.
What it is #
A self-hosted platform for development machines and the AI agents that work on them: every machine is a Firecracker microVM with its own kernel and a ZFS disk (up to 500 GiB) that survives stop, start, resize, clone, and relocation. Guests run NixOS (default), Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, or Windows Server 2025, with AlmaLinux, FreeBSD, and illumos marked experimental. The Elixir monorepo splits into small services: Marshall (the Phoenix/Ash control plane with Cedar authorization), Lilly (per-host Firecracker runners), Porsche (SSH management), Audi (DNS and ingress), Brady (egress proxy and cache), Ziggy (inference proxy), and Galileo (integration gateway). A built-in agent works in threads on any machine and keeps going after you close the laptop; Claude Code and Codex come preinstalled, and no API key ever sits inside a guest. Made by Geoffrey Huntley (the Ralph loop author) with support from Antithesis, Cachix, and Namespace Labs; there is no hosted service.
Status #
Research preview, and it says so itself: the README banner reads “Not for consumption”, with the launch moved to 12 November 2026 (the 3 November date the note previously recorded slipped); no release or tag exists yet, and the default branch holds 2,377 commits as of 2026-11-07, up from the 2,243 counted on 2026-11-01, with the launch-prep train continuing across the Mila app clients (Windows, Android, and Apple, whose native builds now run in CI with parity receipts) and release CI. The repository was created 2025-12-18 as loom, announced 2026-01-17 as The Weaving Loom, “infrastructure for evolutionary software” that he told readers not to use, and renamed to Overalls by mid-October 2026 (the loom URL 301-redirects; the website repository appeared 2026-10-16). 1,557 stars as of 2026-10-21, MIT.
The independent footprint is one 2-point Hacker News story from January 2026 whose title turns his own do-not-use caveat into a name warning, and my Algolia checks found no Overalls coverage at all before launch (as of 2026-10-21). A pre-launch platform with over 170 written architecture decision records and named corporate supporters, but no release, no audit, and no third-party evaluation yet.
Strengths #
- The boundary is a hypervisor: each machine is a Firecracker guest with its own kernel, an isolated network, and lateral traffic blocked by nftables; a locked-down profile removes outbound networking entirely.
- Secrets and keys stay out of guests by construction: inference goes through llm.internal, where Ziggy injects provider credentials outside the VM and records usage per account, and Galileo adds integration credentials at the edge.
- Operational depth unusual at this stage: durable retry-safe lifecycle operations, an HA control plane, node evacuation, restic backups with read-back verification, and Cedar policies evaluated when each action runs.
- The deployment model is GitOps: your fleet is a fork of the repository, hosts self-update from your reviewed branch, and customization happens through Nix overlays.
Cautions #
- Pre-launch research preview: no release, no tag, and the author’s own banner says it is not for consumption.
- Bus factor of one: a solo author with three supporting companies, no contributor base, and no community yet.
- Heavy requirements: x86_64 bare metal with /dev/kvm, ZFS, PostgreSQL, a delegated subdomain, and NixOS fluency; this is a fleet platform, not a laptop wrapper.
- The disclosure program (private advisories, hall of fame, no bounty) exists before any audit does, and the only independent signal so far is a 2-point thread about the old name.
Pricing #
Free and open source under MIT, with no hosted service to pay for; the costs are your own bare-metal hosts and the inference tokens guests consume (accounted per user through the Ziggy proxy). No paid tier exists as of 2026-10-21.
Compared to #
- E2B: the hosted Firecracker sandbox API; choose E2B for zero-ops per-second sandboxes, Overalls when the machines and keys must live on your own hardware.
- Clawk: the disposable per-agent Linux VM for one workstation; Overalls runs a multi-host fleet with teams, sharing, and usage accounting.
- Microsandbox: the libkrun runtime for agent-spawned sandboxes on machines you already have; Overalls provisions the machines themselves.
Bottom line #
Recommended for teams with bare metal and NixOS competence who want persistent, key-free agent machines under their own control and can wait for the 12 November launch. Not for laptop-scale users (a wrapper like Fence or Landrun is the lighter answer), and not yet for anyone who requires a released, audited, community-proven platform.
Changes #
- 2026-10-21 - Created from the coordinator handoff resolving the loom-to-Overalls rename surfaced by the software-factory worker and confirmed by the cross-category scanner, with the loom history (2025-12 creation, 2026-01 do-not-use announcement) and the pre-launch state recorded.
- 2026-10-25 - Corrected the commit count (the default branch holds 1,746 commits as of 2026-10-25, not the 30 recorded at creation, which miscounted a single default page), with over 200 commits since 2026-10-21 in the launch-prep train across the Windows, Android, and Apple clients and the README banner still setting launch for 3 November 2026.
- 2026-11-01 - Volatile refresh for the launch-prep train: the trunk commit count moved from 1,746 (2026-10-25) to 2,243 (2026-11-01) across the Windows, Android, and Apple clients and release CI, and the README banner still sets the research-preview launch for 3 November 2026.
- 2026-11-07 - Recorded the launch date moving from 3 November to 12 November 2026 (the README banner now reads “Overalls launches on 12 November 2026” over the same Not-for-consumption research-preview banner), the trunk commit count advancing from 2,243 to 2,377, and the train continuing on the Mila app clients’ native builds with CI parity receipts; still no release or tag.
See also #
- Sandboxing Feature Matrix - the category comparison this note joins
- E2B - the hosted Firecracker baseline this self-hosted platform mirrors
- Clawk - the single-machine disposable-VM alternative at laptop scale
- Microsandbox - the libkrun neighbor for agent-spawned sandboxes
- Geoffrey Huntley - the author’s note, where the loom announcement was first recorded in this section
References #
https://github.com/ghuntley/overalls - repository and README (research-preview banner, machine model, built-in agent, Ziggy key handling), 1,557 stars, MIT, dates, as of 2026-10-21
https://overalls.dev - the platform site: feature status labels, FAQ, supporters, self-host requirements
https://ghuntley.com/loop/ - the 2026-01-17 Weaving Loom announcement: “infrastructure for evolutionary software”, the do-not-use caveat, the system-verification Ralph loop
https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/items/46648417 - the loom era’s one independent story, a 2-point name warning (2026-01-16)
https://api.github.com/repos/ghuntley/loom - 301-redirects to ghuntley/overalls, the rename record (fetched 2026-10-21)