Use Boat from your coding agent

Your coding agent drives Boat with the boat CLI, the same as you. Give it three things:

The CLI, signed in.
The Boat docs, through the MCP server or llms.txt.
A short rule in AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md that says when to use a sandbox.

This page is about an agent on your computer. For the agents inside a sandbox, read Integrated agents.

curl -fsSL https://boat.dev/install | sh

On Windows, run irm https://boat.dev/install.ps1 | iex in PowerShell. Open a new terminal after the install. An agent runs commands without a browser. Sign it in with an API key:

echo "$BOAT_API_KEY" | boat login --key-stdin

No account yet? The agent can make one itself. Read Sign up from an agent.

2. Give the agent the docs

Source	URL	Use it when
MCP server	`https://docs.boat.dev/mcp`	The agent supports MCP. It can search the docs and read pages.
Index	`https://docs.boat.dev/llms.txt`	The agent can only fetch URLs. Every page, with a one-line summary.
Full text	`https://docs.boat.dev/llms-full.txt`	You want all the docs in one file. It is large: about 135,000 tokens.
One page as Markdown	Add `.md` to any page URL, for example `https://docs.boat.dev/quickstart.md`	The agent needs one page.

Add the MCP server:

claude mcp add --transport http boat-docs --scope user https://docs.boat.dev/mcp

codex mcp add boat-docs --url https://docs.boat.dev/mcp

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "boat-docs": { "url": "https://docs.boat.dev/mcp" }
  }
}

For Cursor, put the JSON in ~/.cursor/mcp.json, or in .cursor/mcp.json in your project. The ⋯ menu on every docs page also has one-click entries for Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and VS Code.

3. Add a rule to AGENTS.md

Put this in AGENTS.md (Codex, Cursor and most agents) or CLAUDE.md (Claude Code) in your project:

AGENTS.md

## Cloud sandboxes (Boat)

Use a Boat sandbox for builds, tests, untrusted code, Docker, and long jobs. Never run them on this computer.
Docs: https://docs.boat.dev/llms.txt. Prices and limits: run `boat limits`; never quote prices from memory.

- Create: `id=$(boat new --json | jq -r 'select(.event=="ready") | .id')`
- Run: `boat exec "$id" --cwd my-app "npm test"` (30 s timeout; `--timeout 600` max)
- Long job or server: `boat exec "$id" --detach "npm run dev"`, then `boat exec "$id" --status <pid>`
- Copy files: `boat scp --recursive ./my-app "$id":/home/user/` or clone the repo inside the sandbox
- Public URL for a port: `boat ssh "$id" "host 3000 --private"`
- Always pass the sandbox id. `current` does not work in a non-interactive shell.
- When done: `boat stop "$id"` (keeps the disk) or `boat delete "$id" --yes` (erases it)

The --json output of boat new is one JSON object per line. The ready line holds the id.

Skills

The open skill pack installs Boat skills for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and other agents:

npx skills add ariana-dot-dev/cloud-sandbox-vm-skills

It has 13 skills, for example cloud-sandbox, parallel-agents, background-worker and public-url-hosting. Each skill tells the agent when to use Boat and which commands to run.

Some skills in the pack still show older values: the on.ascii.dev domain, an 80 GB disk and a fixed cap of 100 sandboxes. These docs are correct. Public URLs use on.boat.dev. For sizes and limits, read Pricing.

Inside a sandbox, every integrated agent already has a boat skill. You do not install it.

Get started

Use cases

Connect to a sandbox

Run work and keep it running

Set up new sandboxes

Stop, resume and snapshots

Machines

Run agents inside

Teams

Security, isolation, data & compliance

Help

Use Boat from your coding agent

2. Give the agent the docs

3. Add a rule to AGENTS.md

Skills

​1. Install the CLI and sign in

​2. Give the agent the docs

​3. Add a rule to AGENTS.md

​Skills

​Related

1. Install the CLI and sign in

2. Give the agent the docs

3. Add a rule to AGENTS.md

Skills

Related