Quick start

Create a VM

Create a VM named dev with the default 10-minute TTL:

weave create dev

The first create prepares a reusable base and may download a VM image, guest packages, and container tooling. Weave shows the current stage and elapsed time while this runs. Compatible VMs created during the next three days clone that base and start faster.

Customize its CPU count, integer memory in GiB, and TTL:

weave create dev --cpus 4 --memory 8 --ttl 1h

TTL values are a positive integer followed by s, m, h, or d.

Use --fresh when you need to provision one new VM without the cached base:

weave create dev-fresh --fresh

Connect to it

Open an interactive shell:

weave ssh dev

Or run a one-off command:

weave shell dev "uname -a"

Copy host files onto the VM's own disk when you want to modify them without changing the originals:

weave cp dev ./package.json ./src/index.ts --o /dev

The destination defaults to the guest user's home directory (~) when --o is omitted.

Inspect and clean up

List your VMs and their remaining TTL:

weave ls

Stop the VM without deleting its virtual disk:

weave stop dev

Start it again with the same configuration and disk:

weave start dev

Starting assigns a new 10-minute TTL by default; use weave start dev --ttl 1h to set another duration. weave create dev also continues to restart stopped VMs for backward compatibility and can update their CPU or memory configuration.

When you no longer need the VM's disk or data, delete it permanently:

weave kill dev