smol machines

smol machines provides fast and isolated Linux microVMs that run on your laptop, in the cloud, or self-hosted environments. It features branching of running machines, allowing you to pause, branch, and checkpoint microVM states with copy-on-write memory and disk snapshots, capturing full machine lineage and enabling rewind and restore functionality. It supports macOS and Linux hosts and differs from Firecracker by including disks and machine identity in branches, and tracking checkpoint history for flexible restore and branching options.