Meet Shed
shed new, and you have a computer with a URL. One thing, four things you do to it, private until you name someone.
Today we are starting to write about Shed in public. It is not open yet. Join the waitlist and we will email you the day it is.
The front door is:
shed new <vm-name>
A name, a computer, an address. Private until you name someone.
I kept hitting this at work. An agent would write a working application in twenty minutes, then stop. The rest of the afternoon was an account, a project, a card, three APIs, a domain. Writing the software had become the cheap part. Putting it somewhere had not. Shed is a cloud for that second half.
One thing, not a catalogue
Most clouds sell you a catalogue. A functions product, a containers product, a database product, a scheduler, each with its own console and its own way of describing a build. You pick one before you have learned anything about the problem.
Shed sells one thing: a computer with a name. Underneath it is a real virtual machine with root. The machine can be replaced. The name, the disk and the keys stay.
There are four things you do to it.
Run something on it. Install a package or start a process. A person and an agent use the same computer the same way.
Keep what matters. Files you put on the disk stay there. Install something once and it is there when you come back, so nobody has to write down how to rebuild the environment.
Reach it. Every computer answers at its own hostname over HTTPS from the moment it exists, and takes SSH like any other machine. Nobody else can open it until you name them.
Keep it awake, or don't. A computer nobody is using goes to sleep and costs nothing. It wakes when someone opens the URL. Tell it to stay on and it stays on. Tell it which process should always be running, and when that process dies it is started again.
What that makes
A web app is a computer with a process listening on a port. A database is a computer with a kept directory and a private port. An agent's workspace is a computer that keeps its files between sessions. Those are the same computer set up three ways, not three products.
That is also why you do not have to describe the environment before you can have one. Make a blank computer, install what you need, and what you installed is what persists.
What you get
A pool of compute. You pay for a plan, not per machine. Twenty computers that answer a request every other day is a reasonable way to live. Sleeping ones cost nothing.
An address, from the start. HTTPS on a hostname of its own, and SSH.
Private until you name someone. By default only you can open it. Naming a person is how sharing works. They sign in as themselves. The URL does nothing for anyone else.
The same CLI for you and the agent. The session that wrote the code can make the computer it runs on. Nobody has to open a dashboard to finish the job.
Over the next few weeks we will write about how this is put together: the machine, sleep, the address, the keys. We waited until the unit was clear. A computer you can send.
Shed is not open yet. The waitlist is on the home page.