Questions, answered plainly.
What a dock is, what survives when it stops, how secrets and takeover work, and what it costs.
What is a dock?
A dock is an isolated Ubuntu machine in the cloud that belongs to one agent. The agent can install software, run Docker, use files and a browser, and open a preview. When the work stops, you archive the dock and resume or branch it later.
How is this different from a code sandbox?
A code sandbox runs one short job and throws the machine away. A dock is a full Ubuntu computer that keeps its repositories, packages, caches, and browser sessions across many agent runs.
Does anything survive when a dock stops?
Yes. Archiving saves the dock's disk as a snapshot. Resume brings back the same dock with the same ID, and any snapshot can be branched into new docks. How long snapshots are kept depends on your plan.
Can my agent run Docker and system services?
Yes. You get root, systemd, package managers, and Docker inside the dock. Every dock is isolated from other customers and from the host.
Can a person watch or take over?
Yes. Open a full desktop or a browser-only session to watch the agent, take control, and hand it back. Only one side controls the input at a time, so the agent and the person never fight over it.
How does Dock handle secrets?
Environments decide what enters a dock. For keys an agent should use but never see, Vault Gateway attaches the credential to approved requests from outside the machine, so the secret never lands inside it.
Which agents and frameworks work with Dock?
Any agent that runs on Linux. Claude Code, Codex, and OpenCode come preinstalled. Drive docks from your own harness through the REST API, the TypeScript and Python SDKs, the dock CLI, or SSH.
What happens when I branch a dock?
Branching starts a new dock from a snapshot. The new dock gets its own ID and can be changed freely. Changes in the original, the branch, or any sibling never affect each other.
How is usage billed?
You pay for running time by machine size, billed by the second. Snapshot storage is listed separately. Archived docks have no compute charge. Prices are a preview until the beta confirms real costs.
What are the Nano, Standard, and Premium tiers?
Nano runs on shared container capacity at the lowest price with best-effort performance. Standard runs on dedicated KVM hardware and is the default. Premium uses lightly loaded hosts with priority placement. You pick the tier when you create a dock.
Can I move a dock to a different tier?
Not in place, because snapshots cannot resume across different backends. Branch the dock into the new tier instead. If a tier is full you get a tier_exhausted error and can choose another tier yourself; Dock never moves you to a pricier tier on its own.
Is Dock available now?
Dock is in private beta. We are giving access in stages and publish regions, features, and security details only once each one is verified.
Still deciding if Dock fits?
Tell us what your agents touch: code, Docker, browsers, previews, or private services. We will tell you honestly.