March 2026 Summaries

boxd is a cloud platform that uses SSH as its primary interface, allowing users to create and access hardware-virtualized KVM virtual machines without web consoles, infrastructure configuration files, or container orchestration tools. Its distributed architecture separates control, worker, proxy, and DNS responsibilities while using a shared Raft consensus log as the coordination mechanism, avoiding separate databases, message queues, service discovery, and distributed locking systems. Each VM runs as an independent OS process, enabling it to continue operating if its supervisor restarts, while proxy and DNS nodes provide public access through unique SSH ports, DNS aliases, and HTTPS routing; workers remain on a private network. User identity is based on SSH public-key fingerprints, with OAuth-assisted key registration and optional JWTs for gRPC API access. Designed for both hosted and self-managed deployments, boxd can run from a single-node setup to a multi-node production cluster and plans to add features including broader image support, snapshots, GPU passthrough, and expanded CLI capabilities.