Boxes

Today, we're introducing something new to Amp: boxes.

A box is an always-on computer to which you can deploy the many delightful things you've built with Amp.

Boxes are small and cheap (the smallest one is $18 per 30 days). But they're full-on computers. You can run anything you want on them. They come with an agent running on them, too. And agents are great at running on computers.

Today, with hyper-individual software being created nearly as fast as someone can dictate a prompt, a small machine goes a long way and can serve most personal or internal software. Software that you build for yourself and people you work with doesn't need to scale to thousands of users. All it needs to be is available for everyone you want to share with and within reach of an agent.

That's what boxes are: a home for what you build with your agents.

Here's Thorsten showing how he deploys applications to boxes and then modifies their production data using agents:

(Note: prices shown in the video refer to Enterprise plan prices. Personal and Team boxes are cheaper. See Pricing.)

How It Works

1. You develop in orbs and, once the app is ready, deploy it to the box. 2. The box runs several apps, bug-tracker, tiny-crm, and team-wiki, and each app has its own onamp.dev URL. 3. You start a thread on the box's Amp runner to work on the live app. 1. You develop in orbs and, once the app is ready, deploy it to the box. 2. The box runs several apps, bug-tracker, tiny-crm, and team-wiki, and each app has its own onamp.dev URL. 3. You start a thread on the box's Amp runner to work on the live app.

You develop your software in orbs. You test and share work in progress in portals. When you're ready, you ask the agent to spawn a box for you.

A box is a single VM to which you can then deploy multiple applications. Each application gets its own URL. The box is permanent and will stick around, it doesn't turn off, and you can deploy to it multiple times from however many orbs you want. (If you want to save money, you can ask the agent to turn the box on and off on a schedule.)

It's worth pointing out that there are no containers or other abstractions involved. A box truly is... just a computer. Because, again, agents are great at using those.

If you want, you can make deployments private or require visitors to Sign In With Amp. Ask the agent to do it for you, it'll know how.

Shared Boxes

You can share boxes with your workspace, so you can run your internal software on a box and everyone on the team can deploy new versions.

Runners on Boxes

Each box comes with its own runner. That means you can leverage how good agents are at using computers by spawning them right there, on the box.

The new thread composer with the executor picker open. Under Boxes, the box maya/workbench is selected with its leaderboard app checked, below the Machine directory and above two more apps on the box. The new thread composer with the executor picker open. Under Boxes, the box maya/workbench is selected with its leaderboard app checked, below the Machine directory and above two more apps on the box.

Ask them to clean up the team wiki's database, for example. Or add a new entry based on a screenshot you took. Or ask it to analyze the data everyone added.

Why build elaborate admin interfaces when you can just ask the agent, right there, to modify the state of the running applications?

Pricing

Boxes come in different sizes. They're billed by the minute. By default, they're always on. But you can turn them on and off on a schedule, if you want to save money.

Size Machine Per hour 30 days, always on 30 days, on 6am to 9pm
b1.tiny 0.5 vCPU (bursts to 2), 2 GB $0.025 $18 $11.25
b1.small (default) 1 vCPU (bursts to 2), 4 GB $0.042 $30 $18.75
b1.medium 2 vCPUs, 8 GB $0.069 $50 $31.25
b1.large 4 vCPUs, 16 GB $0.139 $100 $62.50

Getting Started

Ask your agent to create a personal box for you and then ask it to deploy an application to it. Read the docs if you want to find out more.