{"slug": "vagrant", "name": "Vagrant", "category": "infra", "category_name": "Infrastructure and DevOps", "description": "", "recommenders": 5, "commenters": 22, "warners": 3, "score": 4.509, "rising": -1.64, "first": "2025-12-17", "latest": "2026-10-14", "why": "I've re-discovered Vagrant and have been using it exactly for this and it's surprisingly effective for my workflows.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 5, "neutral": 12, "compare": 3, "warn": 3}, "spark": [0, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I've re-discovered Vagrant and have been using it exactly for this and it's surprisingly effective for my workflows.", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "hashicorp.com", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.vagrantup.com", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Vagrant"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 782311040, "item_id": 48894440, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48894440", "by": "28304283409234", "date": "2026-07-13", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use vagrant on a seperate machine in a seperate network.", "excerpt": "I use vagrant on a seperate machine in a seperate network. The magic of ssh makes it transparent for me, and I feel pretty sure the agents cannot get to stuff that matters.", "context": "", "use_case": "isolating coding agents", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Clawk \u2013 Give coding agents a disposable Linux VM, not your laptop"}, {"id": 767175712, "item_id": 47948482, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47948482", "by": "kalcode", "date": "2026-04-29", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Vagrant I used a lot early on in my career to learn Ruby on Rails in Windows. Thanks a lot for your work!", "excerpt": "Vagrant I used a lot early on in my career to learn Ruby on Rails in Windows. Thanks a lot for your work!", "context": "", "use_case": "learning Ruby on Rails on Windows", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty is leaving GitHub"}, {"id": 755516881, "item_id": 47219805, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47219805", "by": "Terretta", "date": "2026-03-02", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "https://developer.hashicorp.com/vagrant is still a thing.", "excerpt": "Arguably, even without LLM, you too should be dev-ing inside a VM... https://developer.hashicorp.com/vagrant is still a thing. The market for Cowork is normals, getting to tap into a executive assistant who can code. Pros are running their consumer \"claws\" on a separate Mac Mini. Normals aren't going to do that, and offices aren't going to provision two machines to everyone. The VM is an obvious answer for this early", "context": "", "use_case": "VM dev environments", "switched_from": "", "story": "Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning"}, {"id": 746217009, "item_id": 46638563, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46638563", "by": "c0balt", "date": "2026-01-15", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Automating this setup is also somewhat easily possible with, e. G., Lima[0] or HashiCorp vagrant[1].", "excerpt": "Automating this setup is also somewhat easily possible with, e. G., Lima[0] or HashiCorp vagrant[1]. [0]: https://lima-vm.io/ [1]: https://developer.hashicorp.com/vagrant", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Claude Cowork Runs Linux VM via Apple Virtualization Framework"}, {"id": 746117328, "item_id": 46632333, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46632333", "by": "emilburzo", "date": "2026-01-15", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I think Vagrant might also be what you want.", "excerpt": "> [...] and maybe I also want kilo code to run a docker stack for me which it can't in the agent cloud Yes! I'm surprised more people do not want this capability. Check out my comment above, I think Vagrant might also be what you want.", "context": "", "use_case": "VM environment setup", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bubblewrap: A nimble way to prevent agents from accessing your .env files"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 793732944, "item_id": 49608309, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49608309", "by": "fwilhe", "date": "2026-09-08", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "I replaced my vagrant usage with lima-vm due to the license change years ago", "excerpt": "I replaced my vagrant usage with lima-vm due to the license change years ago and I'm happy with it https://lima-vm.io/ Lima is a great tool for simple quick or for automated repeatable virtual environments!", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Vagrant is approaching EOL. No more \"Docker for VMs\""}, {"id": 756636449, "item_id": 47289778, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47289778", "by": "avsm", "date": "2026-03-07", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "has thankfully been avoided", "excerpt": "(coauthor of the article here) Well, before Docker I used to work on Xen and that possible future of massive block devices assembled using Vagrant and Packer has thankfully been avoided... One thing that's hard to capture in the article -- but that permeated the early Dockercons -- is the (positive) disruption Docker had in how IT shops were run. Before that going to production was a giant effort, and 'shipping your ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Decade of Docker Containers"}, {"id": 740883522, "item_id": 46305220, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46305220", "by": "cgfjtynzdrfht", "date": "2025-12-17", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "they go the way of HashiCorp's Vagrant", "excerpt": "Just hear me out. What about a safer container ecosystem without Docker? Podman solved rootless containers and everything else under the sun by now. All docker is doing is playing catch-up. But guess what? They are obsolete. It's just time until they go the way of HashiCorp's Vagrant. Docker is only making money of enterprise whales by now, and eventually that profit will dry up, too. If you are still relying on dock", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Safer Container Ecosystem with Docker: Free Docker Hardened Images"}]}], "who": [{"by": "bithavoc", "context": "long-time Vagrant user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49637674", "date": "2026-09-10"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["vm dev environments", "provisioning test vms", "vm provisioning", "vm management", "isolating coding agents", "managing vms"], "compared": [{"slug": "docker", "name": "Docker", "co": 7, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "lima", "name": "Lima", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "incus", "name": "Incus", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "podman", "name": "Podman", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "virtualbox", "name": "VirtualBox", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49604837", "title": "Vagrant is approaching EOL. No more \"Docker for VMs\"", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46690907", "title": "Running Claude Code dangerously (safely)", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46626836", "title": "Bubblewrap: A nimble way to prevent agents from accessing your .env files", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48892859", "title": "Show HN: Clawk \u2013 Give coding agents a disposable Linux VM, not your laptop", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47218288", "title": "Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50088643", "title": "Running Windows desktop tests from Linux with disposable VMs", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {"warn": 1}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 2, "compare": 2, "neutral": 3}, "2026-02": {"compare": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 2, "warn": 1}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 3, "warn": 1}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 1}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "family_ref": null, "runs_on": null, "lines": [], "quotes": [{"id": 801450258, "item_id": 50090641, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50090641", "by": "madduci", "date": "2026-10-14", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "starting them with Vagrant to provision the app on the system under test", "excerpt": "Same here, we used Proxmox as host to spin up ready images built with Packer and starting them with Vagrant to provision the app on the system under test, the whole triggered by the CI build", "context": "", "use_case": "provisioning test VMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Running Windows desktop tests from Linux with disposable VMs"}, {"id": 798371856, "item_id": 49898241, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49898241", "by": "28304283409234", "date": "2026-09-29", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Always looking for a successor to", "excerpt": "Always looking for a successor to https://developer.hashicorp.com/vagrant. Is this it?", "context": "", "use_case": "VM dev environments", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: NSL \u2013 WSL for Linux"}, {"id": 794202784, "item_id": 49637674, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49637674", "by": "bithavoc", "date": "2026-09-10", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used Vagrant for many years and this was my evolution", "excerpt": "I think I understand why, I used Vagrant for many years and this was my evolution: * Vagrant for everything: VM provisioning(always local), os dependencies, app dependencies and the apps themselves was all Vagrant. * Vagrant for VM provisioning and OS dependencies only. docker-compose for the rest * Vagrant for VM provisioning, Rancher 1.6-ish for the rest * Vagrant for VM provisioning and K3S for the rest. * either ", "context": "long-time Vagrant user", "use_case": "VM provisioning", "switched_from": "", "story": "Vagrant is approaching EOL. No more \"Docker for VMs\""}, {"id": 793732944, "item_id": 49608309, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49608309", "by": "fwilhe", "date": "2026-09-08", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "I replaced my vagrant usage with lima-vm due to the license change years ago", "excerpt": "I replaced my vagrant usage with lima-vm due to the license change years ago and I'm happy with it https://lima-vm.io/ Lima is a great tool for simple quick or for automated repeatable virtual environments!", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Vagrant is approaching EOL. No more \"Docker for VMs\""}, {"id": 793722240, "item_id": 49607640, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49607640", "by": "roryirvine", "date": "2026-09-08", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "the good old cli remains available, albeit under the non-free Business Source License", "excerpt": "I think this is just the cloud-hosted registry - the good old cli remains available, albeit under the non-free Business Source License: https://github.com/hashicorp/vagrant", "context": "", "use_case": "VM management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Vagrant is approaching EOL. No more \"Docker for VMs\""}, {"id": 782311040, "item_id": 48894440, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48894440", "by": "28304283409234", "date": "2026-07-13", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use vagrant on a seperate machine in a seperate network.", "excerpt": "I use vagrant on a seperate machine in a seperate network. The magic of ssh makes it transparent for me, and I feel pretty sure the agents cannot get to stuff that matters.", "context": "", "use_case": "isolating coding agents", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Clawk \u2013 Give coding agents a disposable Linux VM, not your laptop"}, {"id": 782301601, "item_id": 48893850, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48893850", "by": "westurner", "date": "2026-07-13", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Vagrant manages VMs and virtual networks, in Ruby.", "excerpt": "(Years ago I had puppet and cobbler provisioning VMs over PXE and then iPXE. FWIU foreman is more actively maintained than cobbler, which is built on Django web framework.) Vagrant manages VMs and virtual networks, in Ruby. ansible-molecule creates, converges, and destroys VM(s) and containers, in order to test ansible playbooks and ansible roles in clean build roots. podman machine manages VMs: - podman-container-to", "context": "", "use_case": "managing VMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Clawk \u2013 Give coding agents a disposable Linux VM, not your laptop"}, {"id": 767175712, "item_id": 47948482, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47948482", "by": "kalcode", "date": "2026-04-29", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Vagrant I used a lot early on in my career to learn Ruby on Rails in Windows. Thanks a lot for your work!", "excerpt": "Vagrant I used a lot early on in my career to learn Ruby on Rails in Windows. Thanks a lot for your work!", "context": "", "use_case": "learning Ruby on Rails on Windows", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty is leaving GitHub"}, {"id": 766968466, "item_id": 47935529, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47935529", "by": "NitpickLawyer", "date": "2026-04-28", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I also tried vagrant for vm with docker inside", "excerpt": "Sure. I usually work with devcontainers from vscode. They provide great integration ootb (port forwarding & stuff) and are ok for containing the agents for most cases. If you want to work on docker projects I also tried vagrant for vm with docker inside, and you instantiate the agent from vagrant. For local models I used mainly cline and then roo code extensions. Roo was a bit better because it offered more customisa", "context": "", "use_case": "VM with Docker", "switched_from": "", "story": "Running Local LLMs Offline on a Ten-Hour Flight"}, {"id": 757530034, "item_id": 47345627, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47345627", "by": "bryanlarsen", "date": "2026-03-11", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "sandboxed to specific projects using a tool like devbox, nix-devshell, docker or vagrant", "excerpt": "How do people install stuff like this? So many tools these days use `npm install` or `pip install`. I certainly have npm and pip installed but they're sandboxed to specific projects using a tool like devbox, nix-devshell, docker or vagrant (in order of age). And they'll be wildly different versions. To be pedantic `pip` is available globally but it throws the sensible `error: externally-managed-environment` I'm sure ", "context": "", "use_case": "sandboxing project environments", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: A context-aware permission guard for Claude Code"}, {"id": 756636449, "item_id": 47289778, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47289778", "by": "avsm", "date": "2026-03-07", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "has thankfully been avoided", "excerpt": "(coauthor of the article here) Well, before Docker I used to work on Xen and that possible future of massive block devices assembled using Vagrant and Packer has thankfully been avoided... One thing that's hard to capture in the article -- but that permeated the early Dockercons -- is the (positive) disruption Docker had in how IT shops were run. Before that going to production was a giant effort, and 'shipping your ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Decade of Docker Containers"}, {"id": 755518656, "item_id": 47219916, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47219916", "by": "messh", "date": "2026-03-02", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Yeah, very easy to do today. May VPS providers help with this, checkout: https://exe.dev https://sprites.dev https://shellbox.dev", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning"}, {"id": 755516881, "item_id": 47219805, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47219805", "by": "Terretta", "date": "2026-03-02", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "https://developer.hashicorp.com/vagrant is still a thing.", "excerpt": "Arguably, even without LLM, you too should be dev-ing inside a VM... https://developer.hashicorp.com/vagrant is still a thing. The market for Cowork is normals, getting to tap into a executive assistant who can code. Pros are running their consumer \"claws\" on a separate Mac Mini. Normals aren't going to do that, and offices aren't going to provision two machines to everyone. The VM is an obvious answer for this early", "context": "", "use_case": "VM dev environments", "switched_from": "", "story": "Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning"}, {"id": 749895457, "item_id": 46868466, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46868466", "by": "bardsore", "date": "2026-02-03", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I have a Vagrant setup inspired by this blogpost", "excerpt": "Can't speak for the benefits of https://nono.sh/ since I haven't used it, but a downside of using docker for this is that it gets complicated if you want the agent to be allowed to do docker stuff without giving it dangerous permissions. I have a Vagrant setup inspired by this blogpost https://blog.emilburzo.com/2026/01/running-claude-code-dangerously-safely/, but a bug in VirtualBox is making one core run at 100% th", "context": "", "use_case": "Sandboxed agent VM", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hacking Moltbook: The AI Social Network Any Human Can Control"}, {"id": 749599572, "item_id": 46849973, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46849973", "by": "Alifatisk", "date": "2026-02-01", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Openclaw has been a gamechanger for me and my friends. I invited it to a groupchat and my friends are enjoying it a lot. It has analyzed the whole group conversation (nothing sensitive), built a personality for each individual user and noted down how everyone talks and what their interest are and their relationship to each other. It has also started to mimic the way we all speak, it barely feels like its an agent in ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenClaw is everywhere all at once, and a disaster waiting to happen"}, {"id": 747881297, "item_id": 46742581, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46742581", "by": "nezhar", "date": "2026-01-24", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "I considered the idea of using a VM with Vagrant", "excerpt": "I also had the same idea when I built https://github.com/nezhar/claude-container. What I was also curious about is what is actually sent and received by the agent, so I included this feature and created a CLI to make integration easier in a developer workflow. Since I started doing this for other agents as well, I considered the idea of using a VM with Vagrant. However, I want the setup to remain minimal, so I still ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Isolating Claude Code"}, {"id": 747512449, "item_id": 46719528, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46719528", "by": "j77dw", "date": "2026-01-22", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I ended up creating a Vagrant plugin", "excerpt": "Thanks for sharing this! I tried it this morning, and it worked great, so I ended up creating a Vagrant plugin https://github.com/bgrgicak/vagrant-claude-sandbox Claude will add Docker support and a few more tweaks in the next couple of days.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Running Claude Code dangerously (safely)"}, {"id": 747149633, "item_id": 46696852, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46696852", "by": "giancarlostoro", "date": "2026-01-20", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I liked Vagrant back in the day", "excerpt": "Haha I like that too, I agree. I would love a ultra lightweight alternative to docker that isn't docker, and doesn't require much effort to get into. I liked Vagrant back in the day, but that is in no way more lightweight than Docker.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Running Claude Code dangerously (safely)"}, {"id": 747069825, "item_id": 46691864, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46691864", "by": "replete", "date": "2026-01-20", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used vagrant many years ago mostly successfully", "excerpt": "It's a practical approach, I used vagrant many years ago mostly successfully. I also explored the docker-in-docker situation recently while working on my own agentic devcontainer[0]- the tradeoffs are quite serious if you are building a secure sandbox! Data exfil is what worries me most, so I spent quite some time figuring out a decent self-contained interactive firewall. From a DX perspective, devcontainer-integrate", "context": "", "use_case": "sandbox VMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Running Claude Code dangerously (safely)"}, {"id": 746217009, "item_id": 46638563, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46638563", "by": "c0balt", "date": "2026-01-15", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Automating this setup is also somewhat easily possible with, e. G., Lima[0] or HashiCorp vagrant[1].", "excerpt": "Automating this setup is also somewhat easily possible with, e. G., Lima[0] or HashiCorp vagrant[1]. [0]: https://lima-vm.io/ [1]: https://developer.hashicorp.com/vagrant", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Claude Cowork Runs Linux VM via Apple Virtualization Framework"}, {"id": 746164019, "item_id": 46635251, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46635251", "by": "avtar", "date": "2026-01-15", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "both are alternatives to Vagrant as well", "excerpt": "It's been ages since I used VirtualBox and reading the following didn't make me miss the experience at all: > Eventually I found this GitHub issue. VirtualBox 7.2.4 shipped with a regression that causes high CPU usage on idle guests. The list of viable hypervisors for running VMs with 3D acceleration is probably short but I'd hope there are more options these days for running headless VMs. Incus (on Linux hosts) and ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bubblewrap: A nimble way to prevent agents from accessing your .env files"}, {"id": 746117328, "item_id": 46632333, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46632333", "by": "emilburzo", "date": "2026-01-15", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I think Vagrant might also be what you want.", "excerpt": "> [...] and maybe I also want kilo code to run a docker stack for me which it can't in the agent cloud Yes! I'm surprised more people do not want this capability. Check out my comment above, I think Vagrant might also be what you want.", "context": "", "use_case": "VM environment setup", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bubblewrap: A nimble way to prevent agents from accessing your .env files"}, {"id": 746116784, "item_id": 46632299, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46632299", "by": "emilburzo", "date": "2026-01-15", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've re-discovered Vagrant and have been using it exactly for this and it's surprisingly effective for my workflows.", "excerpt": "> unsupervised in a VM in the cloud where the agent has root Why in the cloud and not in a local VM? I've re-discovered Vagrant and have been using it exactly for this and it's surprisingly effective for my workflows. https://blog.emilburzo.com/2026/01/running-claude-code-dangerously-safely/", "context": "", "use_case": "sandboxing agents in local VMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bubblewrap: A nimble way to prevent agents from accessing your .env files"}, {"id": 740883522, "item_id": 46305220, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46305220", "by": "cgfjtynzdrfht", "date": "2025-12-17", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "they go the way of HashiCorp's Vagrant", "excerpt": "Just hear me out. What about a safer container ecosystem without Docker? Podman solved rootless containers and everything else under the sun by now. All docker is doing is playing catch-up. But guess what? They are obsolete. It's just time until they go the way of HashiCorp's Vagrant. Docker is only making money of enterprise whales by now, and eventually that profit will dry up, too. If you are still relying on dock", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Safer Container Ecosystem with Docker: Free Docker Hardened Images"}]}