Parallel agents

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

Build an "agent factory" — configure one cloud VM once, then disk-level fork it into a fleet of identical isolated machines so many agents run in parallel, each with its own filesystem, IPv4, and SSH. Flat per-second pricing makes a fleet ~10x cheaper than E2B/Modal (50 VMs ≈ $432/mo vs ~$4k). Use to fan work across many real machines instead of threads.From its SKILL.md

Install

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

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 6 commands, including `curl -fsSL https://box.ascii.dev/install | sh` and 5 more.
fetches URLsInstructs the agent to fetch 1 URL, including https://box.ascii.dev/install.

SKILL.md

2.0 KB, 457 tokens by cl100k_base, as published. Nobody here has run it

Parallel agents / agent factory (Box)

Use this when work should be fanned out across many isolated environments: N agents on N tasks, a config sweep, or sharding a workload — and each worker needs a real machine, not a coroutine. Box move: configure one box (clone, install, secrets), then fork it; each fork is an independent VM from that snapshot, so you skip re-provisioning every machine.

Why Box

Fork = a configured template — one setup, N identical machines (disk-level, no re-clone per VM).
True isolation per agent — separate filesystem, dedicated IPv4, SSH; agents can even talk over the network.
Fleet economics — 50 VMs × 240 h/mo ≈ $432 (Box) vs ~$4,124 (E2B) / ~$7,160 (Modal).

Honest scoping

Box forks at the disk level, not memory — a fork does not keep the parent's running processes; re-run your start command after fork. For running-process fork or routinely 1000+ concurrent VMs with <500 ms boot, E2B/Modal are built for that. Box's sweet spot: tens of persistent, cheap, fully-isolated machines. EU-only; 100 active VMs soft cap (raising).

Prereqs

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

Recipe

base="$(box new --json | jq -r 'select(.event == "ready") | .id')"
box ssh "$base" -- bash -s < ./setup.sh                 # configure once
for i in $(seq 1 10); do
  fork="$(box fork "$base" --json | jq -r 'select(.event == "ready") | .id')"
  box ssh "$fork" -- "cd /project && ./run-task.sh $i" &
done
wait

Keep setup.sh and the start command idempotent so every fork bootstraps reliably.

What ships with it

Read from the repository

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