# deeplethe/forkd

Fork() for AI agent microVMs. Spawn 100 children in ~100ms from a warm parent; BRANCH a live VM in ~150ms. KVM-isolated, snapshot CoW.

Repository: https://github.com/deeplethe/forkd
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/forkd
Language: Rust
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: ai-agents, copy-on-write, kvm, microvm, rust, sandbox, snapshot
Last push: 2026-08-22T20:23:00+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 79/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 94, longevity 8
- inputs: {"age_days": 114, "days_push": 11, "days_rel": 43, "gap_med": 0, "n_releases_24m": 24}
- flags: young
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2752, forks 207 (observed 2026-08-28T04:07:17.912710+00:00)

## What it is
forkd is a microVM sandbox runtime for AI agent fan-out, built on Firecracker, that forks up to 100 isolated child VMs in ~100ms from a warmed parent snapshot using copy-on-write memory sharing. It also supports BRANCH, which pauses a running sandbox and snapshots its in-flight state in ~150ms so agents can fork mid-execution.

## Use cases
- spawn 100 isolated sandboxes for parallel AI agent execution in milliseconds
- fork a live agent VM mid-task to explore multiple branches
- run untrusted agent code with per-child KVM isolation
- share a warmed runtime (Python deps, loaded ML model) across many VM children cheaply
- snapshot and resume agent state for checkpointing or replay

## When to choose
- you need to fan out many isolated AI agent sandboxes with near-fork(2) spawn latency
- you want per-VM KVM isolation without cold-boot cost
- you need to branch a running agent's state mid-execution
- you run on Linux with KVM and want a Firecracker-based workflow

## When to avoid
- you need VMs on macOS, Windows, or hosts without KVM
- you need full cold-boot VM lifecycle management rather than snapshot-based forking
- your workloads diverge heavily from the parent so copy-on-write savings vanish
- you need a managed cloud sandbox service rather than self-hosted infrastructure

## Facets
- artifact type: service
- maturity: active
- function: agent-framework, concurrency, security
- domain: artificial-intelligence, cloud-computing, developer-tools, security
- platform: rust, cli, self-hosted
- tags: microvm, firecracker, copy-on-write, snapshot, kvm, agent-sandboxing, fan-out, virtualization, sandboxing, ai-agents, linux

## Member repositories
- deeplethe/forkd (main) score 79

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:17.912710+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T08:18:54.566521+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/deeplethe/forkd (fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:17.912710+00:00, sha 92f348596752)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.