We're building a new VM primitive on Railway- persistent virtual machines with sub-5-second startup times, instant cloning, and snapshot-based versioning. Currently this is live in PB, but we're publically signposting the desired experience.

Think of it as the isolation and control of a full VM with the speed and simplicity you expect from Railway.

You'll be able to SSH in, connect your own tools or AI coding agents, snapshot your work, and deploy- all without wrestling with traditional VM infrastructure. Clone a running VM to branch off a new idea, roll back to a previous snapshot, or promote to production when you're ready.

You can try out the vision as it stands today with ssh dev.new

Who is this for

Designed for developers who want more than containers but don't want to manage raw infrastructure. Whether you're iterating with an AI coding assistant or building a traditional app, Express VMs give you a flexible, usage-based compute environment that scales with you.

We're actively developing this and would love your input, what would your ideal VM workflow look like? Do you still believe in localhost?

Drop your thoughts below!