AgentVM app 1.1.4

New: Ubuntu 26.04 is a start in New Image again, and GNOME and KDE Plasma work on it. Released with agent-vm 0.8.7.

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

• Ubuntu 26.04 in New Image, beside Debian 13, made from Ubuntu's own cloud image.
• All three desktops on Ubuntu images: XFCE, GNOME and KDE Plasma.
• No more warnings about 4 KiB memory pages: agent-vm 0.8.5 prevents the memory loss they warned of.
• agent-vm 0.8.7: the app requires it and offers to install it.

Ubuntu 26.04 in New Image

New Image lists the Linux systems your agent-vm builds, and with agent-vm 0.8.7 that is Debian 13 and Ubuntu 26.04 again. Ubuntu was left out from agent-vm 0.7.41, because a box on its kernel could lose memory and stop when the Mac ran short of memory. agent-vm 0.8.5 attaches a Linux box's disk through the Mac's file cache, and with that no box lost memory in any test.

• Choose "Ubuntu 26.04" as the start. The image is named "ubuntu" unless you name it, and the window shows the command, for example agent-vm image create ubuntu --linux ubuntu-26.04 --cpus 4 --memory-gb 4 --disk-gb 32.
• The first build downloads 0.9 GB (Debian's is 0.2 GB) and takes about 2.5 minutes after it. The image takes about 3.4 GB of disk, and an idle box about 0.7 GB of memory.
• The image and box panes say "kernel with 4 KiB pages" for Ubuntu, as a plain fact: Ubuntu has no kernel with 16 KiB pages, the Mac's size. A Debian image still gets one.
• The same recipes (Node, Python, the agents, linux-sudo) work on both systems. In a box, apt needs the pack:ubuntu network pack rather than pack:debian.

GNOME and KDE Plasma on Ubuntu images

With an Ubuntu image or system as the start, New Image offers all three desktops, as for Debian, and agent-vm 0.8.7 builds them. Before, GNOME and KDE refused an Ubuntu image.

• The polkit option keeps its values. debian now means the system's own rules: Debian's, or Ubuntu's in an Ubuntu image. Under them every program in the box, an agent included, may power the box off and mount disk images without a password, so choose it for boxes in which you try applications yourself. deny, the default, refuses every request.
• An image built with GNOME or KDE before gets agent-vm's new recipe at its next update of Tools (the image's Update button). On Debian nothing changes.

From agent-vm 0.8.4 to 0.8.7

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

• A Linux box's disk goes through the Mac's file cache (0.8.5), Debian's too. A box made before gets it at its next start; a box that was running when agent-vm was installed keeps the old way until it is stopped and started.
• Ubuntu 26.04 offered again (0.8.6). The notes about 4 KiB pages at a box's start and before an image build are gone, and so is the check of the Mac's free memory before an image job, which could refuse one.
• GNOME and KDE Plasma on Ubuntu images (0.8.7).

Good to know

• No clipboard between your Mac and a Linux box, and no 3D acceleration. Send files with Send.
• In an Ubuntu box, a file you change on the Mac can be read with its old length for about a second, when a program in the box looked at it just before.

Requirements and installing

• A Mac with Apple silicon and macOS 27 or later. The app does not open anywhere else.
• agent-vm 0.8.7 or later. The app offers to install or update it.

Open AgentVM_1.1.4.zip and move AgentVM.app to the Applications folder, replacing version 1.1.3.

License

Apache License 2.0, as agent-vm.