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Every computer is a real Linux micro-VM provisioned by Vetta’s compute layer with a fixed slice of vCPU, memory, and disk. This page covers how much you get, how to override it, and the states a computer moves through over its life.
A fully virtualized V8-isolate mode (mode: "isolate") is coming soon. Today every computer is a micro-VM; everything below describes it.

Resources

A computer is provisioned with an explicit slice of vCPU, memory, and disk — there are no fixed instance classes. Defaults match the platform default (2 vCPU / 4 GiB); raise them per workload up to the ceilings below. Resources are set at create time and priced per running-second on what you provisioned.

What it costs

There is no creation fee. A computer is metered per running-second on its provisioned vCPU and memory, plus per-second storage on its disk (the first 5 GiB are free). A computer that is paused incurs no compute cost — only storage. Exact per-second rates are on Limits & billing.

Lifecycle

A computer moves through a small set of states. Only running costs compute.
1

running

The VM is live and metered per second on its provisioned resources. This is the state during an agent’s turn and whenever you exec directly.
2

sleeping

Free. The VM is idle with its disk (and memory) preserved. It wakes automatically on the next exec or file operation, or on an explicit resume. This is the state the runtime uses between turns.
3

parked

Free, but explicit. A parked computer must be resumed before it will accept work — exec and file operations are rejected while parked. Use it to hold a computer indefinitely without paying for compute.
4

destroyed

Terminal. Disk, memory, and any attached ephemeral state are torn down. See Snapshots & volumes to persist state across a destroy.

Sleeping vs. parked

Both are free, but they differ in how the next operation is handled:
You rarely park manually. The runtime sleeps and wakes a computer automatically around each turn — parking is for deliberately holding a computer out of rotation. See Runtime & durability.
CLI

Auto-destroy

A computer is automatically destroyed when either of these happens:
  • The organization’s real-USD balance is exhausted (credit exhaustion). See Budgets and Limits & billing.
  • It exceeds its max runtime12 hours by default.
Auto-destroy is irreversible and tears down sandbox disk. Anything the agent should keep must be promoted with publish_file to Files or captured as a checkpoint / volume beforehand.

Concurrency

A computer counts toward your organization’s concurrency cap the entire time it is running, sleeping, or parked — i.e. any time it is not destroyed. Only a destroy frees the slot. The cap is a configurable per-organization limit; see Limits & billing.

Configuration reference

Fields accepted by create:
integer
default:"2"
Provisioned vCPU. Range 1–16.
integer
default:"4096"
Provisioned memory in MiB. Range 128–65536 (0.125–64 GiB).
integer
Root disk size in whole GiB, up to 100.
string
Optional convenience preset (small, medium, large) that expands to a common vcpu/memory_mb/disk_gb combination. Explicit resource fields override the preset. Presets are Vetta shorthand — the underlying provisioning is always the explicit vCPU/memory/disk above.
string
default:"vm"
isolate coming soon (Phase 5). Execution mode. Today every computer is a micro-VM (vm); a fully virtualized isolate mode ships in Phase 5.
boolean
default:"true"
Allow inbound network to the sandbox. Set at create time only — immutable afterward.
boolean
default:"true"
Allow outbound network from the sandbox. Set at create time only — immutable afterward. false is a complete kill-switch; see what is and is not blocked.
integer
Auto-pause the computer after this many minutes idle. See lifecycle.
number
Hard ceiling on total runtime before auto-destroy. See Limits & billing.
object
Environment variables injected into the sandbox.
object
Arbitrary key-value tags.

Next: filesystem

Read, write, list, and manage files on the sandbox disk.