box by ASCII
GitHub Codespaces alternative for AI agents
Codespaces is a polished browser IDE for human developers. box is a leaner VM surface for people running coding agents, background services, and parallel development machines.
Use box when the workflow starts from the terminal or an agent harness, not from a browser IDE.
What you get
A VM fleet, not an IDE session
AI agents do not need tabs, panels, and UI chrome. They need a machine they can access, mutate, reconnect to, and leave running. box exposes the machine directly through a CLI and SSH-friendly workflow.
Long-running work without the IDE assumption
box is designed for background agents, 24/7 services, hosted demos, and multi-VM workflows. Start a VM, run Docker, expose services, and keep the environment around when the agent has more work to do.
Bring your own agent
box does not force you into one coding harness. Use Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, custom scripts, or your own orchestration. The VM is the base layer; the agent workflow is yours.
Which one should you use?
Use Codespaces when
you want a browser IDE tied closely to GitHub repos and devcontainer-based human development sessions.
Use box when
you want direct machine access for agents, background work, parallel VM workflows, and public networking.
Start a box VM
Install the CLI, create a machine, and run your agent in a full Linux environment.
curl -fsSL https://ascii.dev/api/box/install | sh