"Hatch your agents. Let them fly." 🐣💾

Nido is the retro-futuristic nest for your AI agents. It spawns real Virtual Machines in milliseconds, giving your autonomous code a safe place to hatch, grow, and execute.

Containers are cages. Nido is a habitat. 🪺

Built on QEMU and fueled by 80s nostalgia, Nido feels like a game console for DevOps. It provides a full, unconstrained OS for your agents to explore, break, and rebuild.

1. INSERT COIN (Spawn): An agent needs a body. Nido "hatches" a VM from a cached genetic sequence (Image) instantly using Linked Clones technology.
2. PLAY (Execute): The VM is alive. The agent connects via SSH (Neural Link) and has full root access. No shared kernels. No rules.
3. GAME OVER (Destroy): The mission is complete. The VM is vaporized. The nest remains pristine for the next player.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: Linux, macOS, Android (Termux), or Windows (WSL2/PowerShell). QEMU is required to run VMs; the quick installers check for it and offer to install it where supported. On Windows, the installer can also register/install winget and enable Windows Hypervisor Platform for WHPX acceleration.

WINDOWS STATUS: Windows host support is now smoke-tested on a real Windows VM: online installer parsing, nido doctor, catalog/blueprint listing, and basic VM lifecycle passed. Treat it as usable for core workflows, but still young compared with Linux/macOS; it needs heavier long-running and workload-specific testing.

Run this command in your terminal. Do not turn off the console while saving.

Linux & macOS:

{ curl -fsSL https://github.com/Josepavese/nido/releases/latest/download/install.sh || curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Josepavese/nido/main/installers/quick-install.sh; } | bash
# Restart your terminal or source your config to initialize the matrix
source ~/.bashrc  # or ~/.zshrc, power up the path
nido version         # Check checksum

Windows (PowerShell):

try { irm https://github.com/Josepavese/nido/releases/latest/download/install.ps1 | iex } catch { irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Josepavese/nido/main/installers/quick-install.ps1 | iex }
# Restart your terminal to initialize the matrix
nido version

ARM Linux SBCs:

Run this inside your favorite ARM-based Linux distro (Raspberry Pi, Pine64, etc). Android/Termux users should prefer the source installer when Android-specific packages are needed.

{ curl -fsSL https://github.com/Josepavese/nido/releases/latest/download/install.sh || curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Josepavese/nido/main/installers/quick-install.sh; } | bash
# Reload your config
source ~/.bashrc
nido version

Tab-completion is enabled by default. If it's missing, equip it manually:

# Add to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc
source <(nido completion bash)  # or zsh / fish / powershell

Nido supports a wide roster of "fighters" (Cloud Images). Ubuntu, Debian, Alpine, Arch, choose your pixelated champion.

Windows images are available as buildable blueprints because Microsoft distributes installer media rather than ready-to-run qcow2 cloud images. The current official-name entries are:

• windows-11-eval - Windows 11 Enterprise Evaluation
• windows-11-iot-ltsc-eval - Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2024 Evaluation
• windows-server-2022-core-eval - Windows Server 2022 Evaluation (Server Core)

nido blueprint list
nido blueprint build windows-11-eval
nido spawn my-win --image windows-11-eval --gui

The first boot may continue Windows OOBE/post-install work after the blueprint build reports ready. Use --gui for that first boot so the setup state is visible.

Let's hatch a Ubuntu 24.04 bird named agent-01, attach a graphical interface (GUI), and log in immediately.

# 1. DOWNLOAD ROM (Pull Image)
nido images pull ubuntu:24.04

# 2. START GAME (Spawn VM with GUI and custom resources)
nido spawn agent-01 --image ubuntu:24.04 --gui --memory 4096 --cpus 4

# 3. LINK CABLE (SSH Connection)
nido ssh agent-01

Result: A fresh VM boots in <2 seconds. A VNC window opens. You are root.

Nido is designed to be driven by Large Language Models (Claude, GPT-4, Gemini).

Nido speaks native MCP. The server now exposes a compact agent-facing surface: a few high-power tools (nido_vm, nido_template, nido_image, nido_blueprint, nido_system) plus read-only resources like nido://fleet/vms, nido://catalog/blueprints, and nido://system/config. This reduces tool-selection ambiguity, lowers token overhead, and makes agent planning simpler than a flood of one-action tools.

nido register  # Generates the config for your AI client
nido mcp --help  # Human-readable MCP guide
nido mcp-help    # Machine-readable MCP guide for agents

Nido also ships an optional Codex-compatible skill for developers who want agents to use Nido as a standard VM test and isolation layer.

mkdir -p "${CODEX_HOME:-$HOME/.codex}/skills"
cp -R extras/skills/nido-vm-testing "${CODEX_HOME:-$HOME/.codex}/skills/"

The skill teaches agents how to spawn disposable VMs, provision prerequisites with --user-data, upload software under test, parse dynamic ports, run tests, remove the VM, and speed repeated runs with templates. See docs/agent-skills.md.

Every command supports --json. Perfect for scripts and robot eyes.

nido ls --json
# Output: {"vms": [{"name": "agent-01", "state": "running", "ip": "10.0.2.15"}]}

Here is the full move list for the Nido console.

Why download 2GB every time? Nido downloads the generic "Common ROM" (Base Image) once.

Every VM you spawn is just a diff layer (mutation) on top of that ROM.

• Base Image: Read-Only. Safe.
• VM Disk: Read-Write. Ephemeral.

Result: Spawn 100 VMs, use disk space for 1. 🚀

Insert Coin to Join.

1. Fork the repo.
2. go run ./cmd/nido gui to test the Arcade UI.
3. Run go run ./cmd/nido-validator to insure your code withstands the pressure.
4. Submit a PR.
5. High Scores are recorded in AUTHORS.

MIT License. Free as in "Free Play".

Made with 💜 and ☕ by digital artisans.
EST. 2025 • "The Grid. A digital frontier."