🦀 Crabbox

Warm a box, sync the diff, run the suite.

Crabbox is an open-source remote testbox runner for maintainers and AI agents. Lease a fast Linux machine on owned cloud capacity, sync your dirty checkout, run a command remotely, stream output, and release. Local edit-save-run loop, cloud-grade compute.

crabbox run -- pnpm test

Behind that single command: a Go CLI on your laptop, a Cloudflare Worker broker that owns provider credentials and lease state, and a vanilla Ubuntu runner on Hetzner Cloud or AWS EC2 Spot. Crabbox can also wrap Blacksmith Testboxes when you choose provider: blacksmith-testbox.

---

Install

brew install openclaw/tap/crabbox
crabbox --version

No Homebrew? Grab a GoReleaser archive for macOS, Linux, or Windows.

Prerequisites on the laptop: git, ssh, ssh-keygen, rsync, curl.

Current stable release: v0.3.0.

Quick start

# log in once per machine (stores a broker token in user config)
crabbox login

# verify local prerequisites and broker reachability
crabbox doctor

# one-shot: lease, sync, run, release
crabbox run -- pnpm test

# or warm a box once, then reuse it
crabbox warmup                                       # prints cbx_... + a slug
crabbox run --id blue-lobster -- pnpm test:changed
crabbox ssh --id blue-lobster
crabbox stop blue-lobster

Every lease has a stable cbx_... ID and a friendly crustacean slug (blue-lobster, swift-hermit, …). Either works wherever an --id is accepted.

How it works

your laptop                Cloudflare Worker            cloud provider
-------------              ------------------           --------------
crabbox CLI    -- HTTPS --> Fleet Durable Object  -->   Hetzner / AWS Spot
   |                         lease + cost state              |
   |                                                         |
   +------------ SSH + rsync to leased runner <--------------+

• CLI — Go binary. Loads config, mints a per-lease SSH key, asks the broker for a lease, waits for SSH, seeds remote Git, rsyncs the dirty checkout (with fingerprint skip when nothing changed), runs the command, streams output, releases.
• Broker — Cloudflare Worker at crabbox.openclaw.ai plus a single Durable Object. Owns provider credentials, serializes lease state, enforces active-lease and monthly spend caps, and expires stale leases by alarm. Auth is GitHub login or a shared bearer token.
• Runner — vanilla Ubuntu prepared by cloud-init with SSH on the primary port, default 2222, plus configured fallback ports, Git, rsync, curl, jq, and /work/crabbox. No broker credentials live on the box. Project runtimes (Go, Node, Docker, services, secrets) come from your repo's GitHub Actions hydration, devcontainer, Nix, mise/asdf, or setup scripts — not from Crabbox.

A direct-provider mode (--provider hetzner|aws with local credentials) exists for debugging the broker itself; the brokered path is the default.

For the full mental model, see How Crabbox Works. For the doc-to-code map, see Source Map.

Highlights

• One-shot or warm. crabbox run for fire-and-forget; crabbox warmup + --id for repeated runs against the same box.
• Run observability. Every coordinator-backed run gets an early run_... handle. Use crabbox attach <run-id> while it is active, crabbox events <run-id> --after <seq> --limit <n> for durable lifecycle/output events, and crabbox logs <run-id> for retained output after completion.
• Stable timing records. --timing-json on run, warmup, and actions hydrate gives scripts one machine-readable sync/command/total timing schema across AWS, Hetzner, and Blacksmith Testboxes.
• Local-first sync. No clean-checkout requirement. Tracked + nonignored files only, fingerprint skip on no-op runs, sanity checks against suspicious mass deletions, optional shallow base-ref hydration for changed-test workflows.
• Brokered cloud. Maintainers and agents share infra without sharing provider tokens. Hetzner and AWS EC2 Spot are first-class; both fall back across instance families when capacity or quota rejects a request.
• Blacksmith Testbox wrapper. Set provider: blacksmith-testbox to delegate warmup/run/list/status/stop to the Blacksmith CLI while Crabbox keeps local slugs, repo claims, timing summaries, and config conventions.
• Trusted AWS images. Operators can create AMIs from active brokered AWS leases and promote a known-good image as the coordinator default.
• Cost guardrails. Per-lease and monthly spend caps. Live pricing from EC2 Spot history or Hetzner server-type prices, with static fallbacks. crabbox usage summarizes spend by user, org, provider, and type.
• GitHub Actions hydration. crabbox actions hydrate registers a leased box as an ephemeral Actions runner, so the repo's own workflow installs runtimes, services, and secrets. Crabbox does not parse Actions YAML.
• Hardened coordinator auth. GitHub browser login, owner-scoped leases, admin-only routes, optional GitHub team allowlists, Cloudflare Access JWT verification, and service-token support keep normal use and operator automation separate.
• OpenClaw plugin. The repo root is a native OpenClaw plugin for box lifecycle operations: crabbox_run, crabbox_warmup, crabbox_status, crabbox_list, and crabbox_stop. Run inspection stays in the CLI and Crabbox skill.
• Operator surface. doctor, init, status, inspect, list, usage, history, logs, results, cache, admin, cleanup, plus --json output where it matters.

Machine classes

beast is the default. Both providers fall back across an ordered list of instance types.

Hetzner    standard  ccx33, cpx62, cx53
           fast      ccx43, cpx62, cx53
           large     ccx53, ccx43, cpx62, cx53
           beast     ccx63, ccx53, ccx43, cpx62, cx53

AWS Spot   standard  c7a/c7i/m7a/m7i.8xlarge family
           fast      …16xlarge family
           large     …24xlarge family
           beast     …48xlarge family, falling back to 32x/24x/16x

Override with --type or CRABBOX_SERVER_TYPE for a specific instance.

Configuration

Config resolves in order: flags → env → repo .crabbox.yaml → user ~/.config/crabbox/config.yaml → defaults.

broker:
  url: https://crabbox.openclaw.ai
  provider: aws
  token: ...
class: beast
capacity:
  market: spot
  strategy: most-available
  fallback: on-demand-after-120s
aws:
  region: eu-west-1
  rootGB: 400
lease:
  idleTimeout: 30m
  ttl: 90m
ssh:
  key: ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
  user: crabbox
  port: "2222"
  # Ordered fallback ports tried after ssh.port; use [] to disable fallback.
  fallbackPorts:
    - "22"

Optional Blacksmith Testbox wrapper:

provider: blacksmith-testbox
blacksmith:
  org: openclaw
  workflow: .github/workflows/ci-check-testbox.yml
  job: test
  ref: main
  idleTimeout: 90m

Forwarded environment is intentionally narrow: NODE_OPTIONS and CI. Do not pass secrets as command-line arguments. Full env-var reference and per-command flags are in docs/cli.md and docs/commands/.

OpenClaw plugin

The repo root is a native OpenClaw plugin package. Once installed, it exposes Crabbox as agent tools:

• crabbox_run, crabbox_warmup, crabbox_status, crabbox_list, crabbox_stop

The plugin shells out to the configured crabbox binary, so local config, broker login, repo claims, and sync behavior stay owned by the CLI. Set plugins.entries.crabbox.config.binary if crabbox is not on PATH.

Durable run inspection is intentionally CLI/skill-led instead of additional plugin tools: use crabbox history, crabbox events --after --limit, crabbox attach, crabbox logs, crabbox results, and crabbox usage from a shell-capable agent.

Development

# Go CLI
go build -o bin/crabbox ./cmd/crabbox
go test -race ./...
scripts/check-go-coverage.sh 85.0

# Cloudflare Worker
npm ci --prefix worker
npm test --prefix worker
npm run build --prefix worker

# Docs
npm run docs:check

# Optional live smoke, when broker/provider credentials are available
CRABBOX_LIVE=1 CRABBOX_LIVE_REPO=/path/to/openclaw scripts/live-smoke.sh

CI runs the full gate (gofmt, vet, race tests, coverage threshold, docs link/build check, GoReleaser snapshot, Worker lint/typecheck/tests/build) on every push and PR. Tagged pushes matching v* publish Go archives via GoReleaser and bump the Homebrew formula at openclaw/homebrew-tap.

Worker deployment, required secrets, and DNS routing live in docs/infrastructure.md.

Docs

• Get the model: How Crabbox Works, Architecture, Orchestrator
• Use the CLI: CLI, Commands, Features
• Operate it: Operations, Observability, Troubleshooting
• Set it up or audit it: Infrastructure, Security, Source Map, MVP Plan
• Changes: CHANGELOG.md

The GitHub Pages site at https://openclaw.github.io/crabbox/ is generated from the docs/ Markdown:

npm run docs:check
open dist/docs-site/index.html

License

MIT — see LICENSE.