Its platform creates persistent, hardware-isolated Linux virtual machines that can be configured once, then started, forked, or reused as needed. Machines retain files, installed tools, running processes, and shell state across sessions, and can pause or hibernate when idle. The service is designed for development workspaces, pull-request preview environments, coding agents, personal assistants, secure code sandboxes, agent-powered software, reproducible reinforcement-learning environments, and workloads distributed across multiple agents.

Users can manage machines through the CLI, API, or CI jobs. Core capabilities include rapid live forking, snapshots, checkpoints, SSH access, custom domains, organization-scoped environment variables and secrets, and shared integrations. boxd supports connections with GitHub, Linear, and Slack, and offers an MCP server for tools including Claude Code, Codex, and opencode. Its machines are full KVM virtual machines running Ubuntu, with root access and support for common development workloads. Organizations can also run the platform on their own hardware.