Cloud vm

Skill ariana-dot-dev/cloud-sandbox-vm-skills/skills/cloud-vm

Provision a persistent cloud Linux VM in seconds with SSH and a dedicated IPv4 — a real Ubuntu machine (4 vCPU / 8 GB / 80 GB) you can keep, resume, and snapshot. $20 buys ~555 hours, billed per second, ~10x cheaper than typical sandbox providers. Use when the user wants a remote dev box, a cloud VM, or any always-available Linux machine.From its SKILL.md

Install

npx -y skills add ariana-dot-dev/cloud-sandbox-vm-skills --skill cloud-vm

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

4 things to look at

reads credentialsReads from 1 credential source: `BOX_API_KEY`.
2 stars2 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.
runs commandsInstructs the agent to run 8 commands, including `curl -fsSL https://box.ascii.dev/install | sh` and 7 more.
fetches URLsInstructs the agent to fetch 1 URL, including https://box.ascii.dev/install.

SKILL.md

1.8 KB, 399 tokens by cl100k_base, as published. Nobody here has run it

Cloud VM (Box)

Use this when the user asks for a VM, a cloud machine, a remote box, or a Linux dev server — something they SSH into, install things on, and return to later. Unlike ephemeral sandboxes, a Box persists: stop it, resume it days later, disk intact, with its own IPv4.

When to prefer Box

"Give me a Linux VM I can SSH into" → exactly this.
Must survive across sessions → resume from snapshot.
Needs a real, reachable IP → dedicated IPv4 per VM.
Budget-conscious → per-second flat pricing, ~10× cheaper than E2B/Modal/Vercel Sandbox for steady fleets.

Prefer another tool for: GPU serverless (Modal) or non-EU regions (Box is EU-only).

Prereqs

curl -fsSL https://box.ascii.dev/install | sh, then export BOX_API_KEY=… and box login "$BOX_API_KEY" --json.

Recipe

box_id="$(box new --json | jq -r 'select(.event == "ready") | .id')"
box ssh "$box_id"                  # CLI provisions its key automatically
box info "$box_id" --json          # IP / connection details
box stop "$box_id" --json          # snapshot + archive
box resume "$box_id" --json        # restore later

Specs & billing

Hetzner CX33: 4 vCPU / 8 GB / 80 GB SSD, x86_64, root Ubuntu, dedicated IPv4. $20 ≈ 555 VM-hours, per second. Default 1 h auto-stop — use box new --no-auto-stop or box extend <id> --hours N (TTL ≤ 30 days). Disk-level snapshots only; EU-only; 100 active VMs soft cap.

What ships with it

Read from the repository

Just SKILL.md. No reference files, no scripts.