What is Zydra?

1 November 2026

Zydra is a Linux desktop that runs in your own virtual machine on our servers and draws itself inside your terminal. You open it with ssh zydra.sh. It is built for running AI coding agents such as Claude Code and Codex away from your laptop: they keep working after you close the lid, they can't touch the files on your computer, and you still get their notifications, paste screenshots into them and answer them from your phone.

How do I try it?

Run this in a terminal:

ssh zydra.sh

The first time, you get a free 15-minute demo. There is no sign-up and no card. Your SSH key is your account, so there is no password or email to set up. The 15 minutes start when your desktop first shows, and each key gets one demo a day. When every demo slot is taken, you wait in a queue that shows how many people are ahead of you.

If you have no SSH key yet, ssh-keygen -t ed25519 makes one.

What is on the desktop?

Windows tile side by side, with a launcher, a status bar and a menu. Out of the box you get a terminal, a web browser, a file manager, a text editor and an image viewer. The terminal comes with Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Gemini CLI and Aider installed, plus git, the GitHub CLI, Node.js, gcc, ripgrep, tmux and the usual command-line tools. Docker and Podman run inside the VM too.

You log in to the agents with your own accounts. Zydra doesn't resell model access.

Browsers and other graphical apps use the server's GPU, and Zydra streams them to your terminal as pictures. Your configs come along with one command:

tar -czf - -C ~ .claude .gitconfig | ssh zydra.sh upload

Why was Zydra built?

The person who built Zydra ran coding agents on a server for two reasons. One agent could start a dozen subagents and use up the memory on their own computer in the middle of other work, and they didn't want an agent reading their personal files. The server fixed both, and broke other things. Notifications stopped arriving. Pasting a screenshot did nothing. tmux broke scrolling. There was no good way to watch the agent from a phone and talk to it. Seeing what the agent built meant waiting for a deploy, because port forwarding was fiddly. And the agent ran on a production server with no sandbox.

Zydra is the fix for that list.

What does it fix compared with a plain server?

Memory. The paid plan gives the VM 8 GB of memory and 80 GB of storage, separate from your laptop. A runaway agent slows its own VM, not your computer.
Isolation. Every desktop is its own virtual machine, run by crosvm. The agent can change anything inside it and has no way into the files on your laptop. Sandboxing AI coding agents explains how that compares with a container.
Notifications. Programs in the VM can send desktop notifications. Zydra passes them to your terminal, which shows them as normal notifications, and to your phone if you paired one.
Image paste. Copy a screenshot on your computer and press Ctrl+V in Claude Code. Zydra fetches the image from your computer's clipboard through your terminal. This needs a terminal with Kitty's clipboard protocol, such as Kitty.
Scrolling. Zydra's terminal keeps 10,000 lines of history and scrolls with the mouse wheel. You don't need tmux to keep sessions alive, because the desktop keeps running when you disconnect.
Your phone. Pair a phone from the desktop's menu and open the phone view. It shows your windows live, and you can type into them, send keys and switch between them.
Seeing the result. The browser runs on the same machine as the agent, so a dev server on localhost:5173 opens in it with no port forwarding. Agents can open a page beside themselves and take screenshots of it.
Undo. The timeline records the desktop and lets you rewind the whole machine and branch from an earlier point, like git for the VM.

Which terminal should I use?

Kitty works best, and Ghostty is the second choice. Both support the Kitty graphics protocol, which Zydra uses to draw graphical apps. WezTerm also supports it and works, but it has been slow with Zydra.

Other terminals still work. With iTerm2 inline images or Sixel, graphical apps work but redraw slower. In a terminal with neither, or inside tmux or screen, Zydra draws text only: the terminal, editors and command-line tools work fully, and graphical windows show their name.

On a Mac, set Option to act as Alt, or some of Zydra's keys won't work. The SSH settings page has a config block that makes typing faster over slow links.

What does it cost?

The demo is free. The paid plan is $40 a month for one VM with 8 GB of memory, 80 GB of storage and no time limit. Within 3 days of your first payment you can refund it from Settings with no reason needed, once per person and card. When a demo ends, your terminal shows a checkout link, and paying there keeps the workspace you started.

What Zydra is not

Zydra is not a hosting service. It doesn't give apps in the VM a public address, and it is not a VPN or a proxy. If you want to serve a website to other people, a VPS or a host built for that fits better.

It is also not the cheapest way to run agents remotely. If you already own a spare machine, or you are happy with tmux, Tailscale and an SSH app, a do-it-yourself box costs less. The comparison with a VPS goes through that trade-off.

Try it

Run ssh zydra.sh in your terminal. The demo is free for 15 minutes and needs no sign-up.