Nexus

Remote Firecracker workspaces for Mac developers.
Run your dev stack inside an isolated Linux VM on a remote host — reach it from your Mac in one command.

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What it does

Feature	How
Isolated Linux workspaces	Each workspace is a Firecracker microVM — full Linux kernel, Docker, separate network
One-liner install	Single script installs the CLI and daemon on any platform
Port forwarding	nexus spotlight start <id> tunnels VM ports to localhost on your Mac
Interactive VM shell	nexus workspace shell <id> drops you into the running VM
Git + Docker inside the VM	Develop, commit, and run containers in full isolation
macOS companion app	Native SwiftUI app for workspace management and tunnel status

Install

Run this on both your Mac and your Linux host:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/oursky/nexus/main/install.sh | sh

This installs the nexus CLI and nexus-daemon binaries for your platform.

Quick Start

# On your Linux host — start the daemon
nexus daemon start

# On your Mac — connect to it
nexus daemon connect user@your-linux-host

# Create a workspace from a local project
nexus workspace create --repo ~/my-project

# Start the workspace (boots a Firecracker VM)
nexus workspace start <workspace-id>

# Forward VM ports to localhost
nexus spotlight start <workspace-id>

# Shell into the VM
nexus workspace shell <workspace-id>

macOS App

The companion app shows connected workspaces, detected ports, and tunnel status. Download from TestFlight or build from source:

cd packages/nexus-swift && xcodebuild

Contributing

# Cross-compile, deploy to remote host, restart daemon
task dev:remote

# Also rebuild CLI locally
task dev:cli

# Also rebuild Swift app
task dev:swift

See CONTRIBUTING.md for full setup.

Architecture

Mac (CLI + App)
   │  SSH tunnel (JSON-RPC 2.0 / WebSocket)
   ▼
Linux daemon (nexusd)
   │  vsock
   ▼
Firecracker microVM  ←  workspace filesystem (ext4)
   │  Docker bridge
   ▼
Your containers  (web · api · db · …)

Docs

• CLI reference
• Daemon setup
• Contributing