Use casesSelf-hosted agents
Self-hosted coding agents: your machines, not a vendor's cloud
Swarm is an open-source agent platform you install on your own Linux machine. Nothing is copied to a vendor: coding agents work in your folders on your disk, each job on its own branch, on the model plan or API key you connect. Only the model requests leave the machine.
What changes when the agents run on your machine
| Cloud coding agents | Swarm on your machine | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the code is | Copied into the vendor's sandbox | Your folders, on your disk |
| Your toolchain | Whatever the vendor image has | Your machine, or a folder environment you define |
| Secrets | Stored with the vendor, if at all | Typed into Swarm once; agents see only stand-ins |
| Models | The vendor's | Your ChatGPT plan, Claude plan through Claude Code, or API keys |
| Source | Closed | Open source, Apache 2.0 |
| Runs when your laptop sleeps | Yes | Yes, it is a headless service |
What you get
- Built-in agents: a coder, a finder (research and audits), a designer (UI and HTML) and media agents for images, video and sound. Nothing to deploy.
- Your own workers: named workers with standing instructions, on a schedule or a trigger.
- Workflows: steps that run when a job ends: a reviewer, sending the job back with notes, your own script to push or deploy.
- Monitoring: what ran, what changed, what failed and what it cost, readable by your AI and sent to a webhook or Telegram.
Keys that never reach the agent
You type an API key into Swarm yourself (sudo swarmctl secret set, at a hidden prompt) and grant it to one folder for a set time. Agents in that folder see a stand-in. Swarm's gateway puts the real value into requests to the hosts you allowed and scrubs it out of the responses. Read more in the key leasing guide.
Set it up
Read swarmagent.dev/llms.txt and set up Swarm on this machine for me.
installswarm_list_providersswarm_create_project
Swarm is running. Connect your ChatGPT plan with this code, then tell me which folders your work is in.
Swarm runs on Ubuntu 24.04 x86-64: your PC, a VPS or a cloud VM. On a Mac, run it on a server and drive it from the Mac.
Questions
Is Swarm a Codex cloud or Devin alternative?
It covers the same job, coding agents working while you do something else, but on your own machines, with your own model plan, and open source. It has no hosted version yet.
Does my code leave my machine?
Your repositories and checkouts stay on the machine. The parts of the work the agent sends to the model go to the provider you connected, as with any AI coding tool.
Do agents run in a sandbox?
By default they run as Swarm's own user without a sandbox. install.sh sandbox on runs every command in one container per project, and environments give a folder its own container with its secrets as stand-ins.
What hardware does it need?
An Ubuntu 24.04 x86-64 machine you can run sudo on. A small VPS is enough to start; agents mostly wait on the model.
Updated 24 October 2026