Agent Virtualization

What VMware did for servers, Helix does for agents. But the stack is completely different — because agents need fundamentally different isolation than operating systems.

VMware solved this problem for computers. Who solves it for agents?

In 2001, VMware shipped a product that changed enterprise infrastructure forever. The insight was simple: one physical server could run dozens of virtual machines, each fully isolated, each with its own operating system. You didn't need to buy a new box for every workload. You needed a virtualization layer.

That insight created a $60 billion company and an entire category of infrastructure.

Today, the same problem is back — but for AI agents.

Walk the floor of any engineering-forward company and you'll find developers with dedicated Mac Minis on their desks, each running a single AI agent. One machine. One agent. No isolation. No management. No visibility. They're buying $600–$2000 of hardware to run a single autonomous process — the most expensive way to solve a real problem.

This is the pre-VMware era for agents. One workload per machine. No density. No isolation. No fleet management.

Helix is the virtualization layer — for agents.

Why you can't just run agents in VMs

The obvious reaction is: "We already have virtualization. Just spin up a VM per agent."

It doesn't work. The security boundaries agents need are fundamentally different from the security boundaries operating systems need. Computer virtualization and agent virtualization are solving different problems with different architectures.

The mismatch is architectural. A VM gives an agent a full operating system — gigabytes of disk, minutes to provision, static credentials that persist after the task is done. An agent doesn't need any of that. An agent needs a lightweight isolated workspace with a desktop, a codebase, ephemeral credentials, and a way for humans to watch what it's doing.

Containers get closer — but containers don't give you a GPU-accelerated streaming desktop. You can't watch a container work. You can't pair-program with a container. And containers don't solve credential isolation at the git level.

Agent virtualization requires a purpose-built stack.

The agent virtualization stack

Helix runs on top of your existing infrastructure — inside your VMs, on your Kubernetes cluster, or directly on bare metal like a Mac Mini. It doesn't replace your hypervisor. It adds a new layer purpose-built for agent isolation.

Containers for compute isolation

Each agent computer runs in its own container with a full GPU-accelerated desktop — browser, terminal, filesystem, GUI applications. The container provides process isolation, network isolation, and resource limits. But unlike a raw container, each one includes a complete 4K streaming desktop that any team member can watch or step into.

Deduplicated filesystem for density

If you're running 15 agents on the same codebase, you don't want 15 copies of a monorepo consuming storage and I/O. Helix uses a novel combination of filesystem technologies — content-addressed storage, copy-on-write overlays, and sparse cloning — to give each agent a fully isolated view of the codebase without duplicating it. Each agent sees its own filesystem, can write freely, and never contaminates another agent's workspace, but the shared base is stored once. This is what makes 15+ agents on a single machine practical. A naive "one full clone per agent" approach gets expensive fast — on a large monorepo, storage and I/O costs multiply with every agent you add.

Per-agent git credential isolation

This is where agent virtualization diverges most sharply from computer virtualization.

A VM gets static credentials — SSH keys, service account tokens, things that persist for the life of the machine. That model is catastrophically wrong for agents. An autonomous agent that can push code to your repositories should never hold long-lived credentials. If the agent is compromised, confused, or simply makes a mistake, those credentials become a vector for damage.

Helix issues ephemeral per-task git keys. When an agent starts a task, it receives a git credential scoped to the specific branch it's working on. When the task ends — success or failure — the credential is revoked. The agent can never push to main. The agent can never access branches outside its assignment. If the agent is compromised, the blast radius is a single feature branch, not your entire codebase.

This is an agent-specific security model. VMs never needed this because VMs don't autonomously push code.

GPU-accelerated streaming desktops for visibility

You never need to "watch" a VM run Apache. But you absolutely need to watch an agent write code, interact with a browser, or make design decisions. Agents are autonomous — they make choices. Without visibility, you're trusting a probabilistic system to make deterministic decisions about your production codebase.

Every Helix agent computer includes a full 4K hardware-encoded streaming desktop. Your team can see every running agent from a fleet dashboard, zoom into any agent's screen, and jump in with multi-cursor pair programming when an agent gets stuck. This isn't a nice-to-have — it's a fundamental requirement of agent virtualization that computer virtualization never needed.

What this enables

Density without compromise

15+ fully isolated agent computers on a single Mac Mini. Each with its own desktop, filesystem, credentials, and network access. No cross-contamination. No shared state. The same density VMware brought to servers — but for agents, on hardware you already own.

Ephemeral security by default

Every agent computer is a sandbox that exists for the duration of a task. Credentials are created at start, revoked at end. The filesystem is destroyed. Nothing persists. This is the security model agents require — not the long-lived, static model designed for servers that run for months.

Fleet management at scale

Just as VMware's vCenter let you manage hundreds of VMs from a single dashboard, Helix's control center lets you manage dozens of agent computers from a single interface. See what every agent is doing. Allocate work through a kanban pipeline. Review specs before code is written. Approve PRs before they merge. This is what managing a fleet of autonomous agents actually looks like.

Infrastructure you already have

Helix doesn't require new hardware or a new hypervisor. It runs on your existing Mac, your existing VMs, your existing Kubernetes cluster. Agent virtualization is a layer — not a replacement for anything you already operate.

The parallel is real, but the stack is new

VMware proved that virtualizing workloads on shared hardware could transform enterprise infrastructure. The same transformation is happening now for AI agents — but the stack has to be rebuilt from scratch.

Computer virtualization needed: hypervisor, virtual NICs, virtual disks, vMotion, vCenter.

Agent virtualization needs: container isolation, deduplicated filesystems, ephemeral per-task credentials, branch-scoped git access, GPU-accelerated streaming desktops, fleet dashboards, kanban orchestration, and human-in-the-loop review gates.

Almost nothing carries over. The only thing that's the same is the core insight: one machine, many isolated workloads, managed as a fleet.

Helix is the first product built from the ground up for agent virtualization. Not adapted from container orchestration. Not bolted onto an existing IDE. Purpose-built for the specific isolation, density, security, and visibility requirements that autonomous AI agents demand.

Get started

On your Mac: Download Helix and run 15+ agent computers on hardware you already own. $299/year. Start 24-hour free trial →

On your infrastructure: Deploy agent virtualization on your Kubernetes cluster. RBAC, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, ephemeral credentials, unlimited agents. Talk to us about an enterprise pilot →