AgentVM app 1.1.3

New: A desktop in a Linux box: New Image offers XFCE, GNOME and KDE Plasma, and View shows the desktop of a Linux box or image that has one. Released with agent-vm 0.8.4.

AgentVM.app is a Mac app for creating and managing AgentVM images and boxes: the virtual machines, running macOS or Linux, that AI coding agents run in, isolated from your Mac. It is a companion to the agent-vm and avm command line tools. Agents themselves run in Terminal (avm) or in Cadabra.

Highlights

• Three desktops for Linux images. New Image lists agent-vm's desktop recipes for a Linux start: XFCE, GNOME and KDE Plasma.
• View for a Linux box with a desktop, as for a macOS box, and for the Linux image, to set it up by hand.
• A View window that fits. It scales, goes full screen, and an interactive one gives the box's screen its own size (agent-vm 0.8.4).
• agent-vm 0.8.4: the app requires it and offers to install it.

A desktop in a Linux box

A Linux box used to have only a terminal. Now a Linux image built with a desktop recipe, and every box made from it, has a screen, a keyboard and a pointer, already logged in. In New Image, with a Linux image or system as the start, tick one of:

Recipe	Desktop	To download	In the image	Memory the box uses, idle
linux-xfce	XFCE	94 MB	about 430 MB	about 0.9 GB
linux-gnome	GNOME, on Wayland	about 210 MB	about 950 MB	1.1 to 1.4 GB
linux-kde	KDE Plasma, on Wayland	about 340 MB	about 1.35 GB	1.6 to 1.9 GB

A box without a desktop uses about 0.7 GB. XFCE is the lightest and the quickest to draw; GNOME and KDE Plasma are the desktops most Linux users have, so they are the ones to see an application of yours in.

• linux-xfce-extras adds Debian's themes and wallpapers to pick from, icons, thumbnails, notifications and the Desktop and Documents folders. It needs linux-xfce, and the window says so beside it until that is ticked too, or the start image has it.
• One desktop at a time. Ticking a desktop unticks any other. A recipe of your own that says "screen": true counts as a desktop too.
• A desktop ticked on a start image that has one says so, for example "starts in place of the desktop deb-xfce has": agent-vm installs both, and the last one starts.
• GNOME and KDE have an option, polkit. Both need polkitd, the system service that decides whether a program may power the system off or mount a disk. deny, the default, makes it refuse every request. debian follows Debian's rules, under which every program in the box, an agent included, may power the box off and mount disk images without a password: choose it for boxes in which you try applications yourself, not for an agent working unattended. polkitd in a GNOME or KDE image explains both.
• Room for more recipes: the window has 16 recipe places, where it had 10. A Linux start now has 11 of agent-vm's recipes, which leaves room for 5 of your own, and 7 on a macOS start.
• GNOME and KDE are for Debian images, the Linux system agent-vm offers.

View for a Linux box or image with a desktop

View is now shown for everything with a screen: every macOS box and image, and a Linux one with a desktop. It stays hidden for a Linux box or image without one.

• A box's own screen counts. A box made before its image had the desktop has none until it is recreated.
• View on the image opens it for changes by hand that every box made afterwards inherits: a desktop setting, a browser profile, an application you signed in to. Closing the window shuts the image down.
• Before it shuts down, agent-vm checks the image again as its build sealed it. An image that no longer passes (changing that takes root in the image, which only the linux-sudo recipe gives) is marked failed. The alert then says, for example, "The view of image deb-xfce failed after its window opened", with agent-vm's error and the Terminal command that makes the image again.
• Set Up... stays for macOS images: a Linux image has no Full Disk Access to grant.
• New Box says when a box made from a Linux image will have a desktop, and that View shows it.

New Box: memory for a desktop

For a box made from an image with a desktop and given less than 4 GB of memory, New Box now says: "With N GB of memory, the desktop leaves little free, and a box has no swap: 4 GB or more suits a desktop and an agent." agent-vm notes such a box as small too, but where the window does not show it. It blocks nothing. Give 8 GB to a box in which an agent builds and runs the application you look at.

From agent-vm 0.7.59 to 0.8.4

What the newer agent-vm brings that you will see:

• A screen for a Linux image and its boxes when a recipe asks for one, and box view of such a box (0.8.0).
• image view of a Linux image with a desktop, with the check before it shuts down (0.8.1).
• The XFCE desktop recipe, linux-xfce, with its extras (0.8.2), and GNOME and KDE Plasma, with the polkit option (0.8.3).
• The View window, for macOS and Linux alike (0.8.4):
  • The picture fills the window. Resizing it used to leave the box's screen at its first size, with white space beside it or the rest cut off.
  • Full screen with the window's green button.
  • A view-only window scales the picture and keeps the screen's shape, so looking still changes nothing in the box.
  • An interactive window gives the box's screen its size when a resize ends, and on entering and leaving full screen. The desktop gets the room and its text keeps its size. macOS, GNOME, KDE and XFCE take it within a second.
  • Closing a window that changed the screen sets it back to 1280 by 800, the size every start gives it.
  • It is not sharper on a Retina screen: the picture is as soft as before.

Good to know

• A box that was running when agent-vm 0.8.4 was installed keeps the old window until it is stopped and started again.
• No clipboard between your Mac and a Linux box, and no 3D acceleration. Send files with Send. The processors draw the desktop: XFCE is quick, and GNOME's and Plasma's animations are slower than on a computer.
• Programs an agent starts in the box open no window unless they are told where the desktop is. agent-vm's Linux boxes page has the commands.
• In KDE Plasma, a program can still lock the screen, and no password unlocks it. In Terminal, agent-vm exec --box <box> --user root -- loginctl unlock-sessions does.
• An image that View marked failed is made again in Terminal, with the command the alert gives. Build Again... is not offered for it.

Requirements and installing

• A Mac with Apple silicon and macOS 27 or later. The app does not open anywhere else.
• agent-vm 0.8.4 or later. The app offers to install or update it.

Open AgentVM_1.1.3.zip and move AgentVM.app to the Applications folder, replacing version 1.1.2.

License

Apache License 2.0, as agent-vm.