Machines.
What a box is made of: sizes and disks, Ubuntu 24.04 on a dedicated x86_64 virtual machine, what comes preinstalled, and the Prized processes that run beside your work.
Sizes
| Size | Specs | Disk | Awake | Asleep | Plan that runs it 24/7 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nano | 2 vCPU / 2 GB | 40 GB | $0.014 an hour | $0.004 an hour | $10 a month |
| Micro | 2 vCPU / 4 GB | 80 GB | $0.034 an hour | $0.008 an hour | $25 a month |
| Extra Small | 2 vCPU / 8 GB | 150 GB | $0.068 an hour | $0.015 an hour | $50 a month |
| Small | 4 vCPU / 16 GB | 300 GB | $0.137 an hour | $0.030 an hour | $100 a month |
| Medium | 8 vCPU / 32 GB | 500 GB | $0.342 an hour | $0.050 an hour | $250 a month |
| Large | 16 vCPU / 64 GB | 1 TB | $0.685 an hour | $0.100 an hour | $500 a month |
| Extra Large | 32 vCPU / 128 GB | 2 TB | $1.370 an hour | $0.200 an hour | $1,000 a month |
A box is one dedicated virtual machine in the size you pick; the size decides the vCPUs and memory, the disk it is born with, and the hourly rate. Pick it by label or short name (prized box new --size Small; xs, s, m, l, xl, or the ids nano, micro, lite, flow, pro, max, ultra all work) or from the create form; change it later with a resize. Rates and the plan ladder are on Billing.
- Nano and Micro are burstable, sized for editors, agents, and small dev servers rather than sustained full-CPU load; Extra Small and up are fixed-performance.
- Memory decides what a pause keeps. Nano through Small hibernate and resume where they were; Medium and larger stop clean (Pause and resume).
- The free credit starts Nano through Small, one box at a time. Medium and larger come with a plan; a box already started on the credit can be resized within the same four sizes.
- No GPU on any size.
Disk
One encrypted volume is the root and the only disk: your home directory, Docker images, and the system all live on it.
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Type | SSD (EBS gp3) at baseline performance, always encrypted; snapshots inherit the encryption |
| Size | The Disk column above, 40 GB on a Nano to 2 TB on an Extra Large |
| Growing | Sizing up grows the disk during the same restart (Resize) |
| Shrinking | Never. A box that kept a bigger disk than its size keeps paying that disk's sleep rate, and a snapshot restores only into a size whose disk holds it (Restore) |
| Paused | The disk stays, at the sleep rate. After 14 days paused it is parked as a snapshot: deep sleep (States) |
| Snapshots | Block-level, incremental images of this disk, taken while the box runs (Snapshots) |
Operating system
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on x86_64, fully upgraded when the box image was built. It is your machine: the login user has passwordless sudo, is in the docker group, and can apt install whatever is missing.
- Your login user is your first name: lowercased, accents folded, leading digits dropped, letters, digits, and hyphens only, up to 31 characters (
Josésigns in asjose). When nothing usable survives, or the name collides with a system account such asgit, the user isdoppel; a box restored or forked from a snapshot keeps its source box's user.prized box infoshows it. - Sandboxes work.
bwrapcarries the AppArmor grant it needs, so the sandboxes Claude Code and Codex run commands in work; Ubuntu's restriction on unprivileged user namespaces otherwise stays on.
Preinstalled software
Baked into the box image, so a fresh box has it from first boot. Nothing is signed in: your agents' credentials come from your machine.
| What | On the box |
|---|---|
| Docker Engine, Compose, Buildx | docker, docker compose, docker buildx; the daemon starts at boot, and your user is in docker, so no sudo |
| Claude Code, Codex CLI | claude, codex; per user, each updates itself in place |
| GitHub CLI | gh |
| Compilers and build tools | gcc, g++, make, pkg-config, git |
| Python | python3, pip, venv |
| Shell tools | tmux, mosh, rg, fd, jq, htop, rsync, sqlite3, zip, unzip, zstd, curl, wget |
| Desktop stack | XFCE, Xvfb, x11vnc, Google Chrome, xdotool, wmctrl; nothing starts until you open the desktop |
| Sandboxing | bwrap (bubblewrap), with the AppArmor profile above |
| Sync agent | Mutagen's agent, fetched on the first prized sync add or prized setup (Sync) |
Not preinstalled: Node.js, Go, Rust, Homebrew, databases, and the rest of a working environment. The environment step of prized setup installs the versions your machine has (Bring your environment); for a first boot that repeats across boxes, use an environment.
Architecture and virtualization
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| CPU architecture | x86_64 (amd64) only; no arm64 sizes. prized env rebuilds or re-pulls arm64-only Docker images for amd64 |
| Virtualization | One virtual machine per box with its own kernel; not a container, not a shared host. Docker inside works as on any Linux machine |
| Nested virtualization | Off. KVM is not available inside a box |
| GPU | None |
| Cloud credentials | None. A box carries no cloud role, so nothing you run finds provider credentials on it |
Each size maps to one EC2 instance type:
| Size | Instance type |
|---|---|
| Nano | t3a.small (burstable) |
| Micro | t3a.medium (burstable) |
| Extra Small | m6a.large |
| Small | m6a.xlarge |
| Medium | m6a.2xlarge |
| Large | m6a.4xlarge |
| Extra Large | m6a.8xlarge |
Regions
| Region | AWS id | In the CLI |
|---|---|---|
| US West (Oregon) | us-west-2 | oregon, the default |
| US West (California) | us-west-1 | california |
A box lives in one region and can move (Regions). The rate for a size is the same in both, and a snapshot stays in the region its box was in.
What runs on the box
Beside your own processes, a fresh box runs a small set of Prized services, ordinary systemd units you can inspect (systemctl status prized-agent).
| Process | What it does for you | What it can see |
|---|---|---|
prized-agent, as your login user | Lists listening ports and their processes, samples CPU, memory, disk, and network, lists tmux sessions, judges idleness for auto-pause, relays loopback-only ports for mirroring, and updates itself | A read-only view of the system and the process table; it never pauses the box itself |
prized-secretsd, root, loopback only | The secrets broker: swaps a placeholder for the real value on requests to the hosts you allowlisted | Secret values in memory only; idle until a secret is mounted |
sshd, root, tunnel only | Your sessions, sync, mount, prized exec, and every SSH-speaking tool | Accepts Prized's short-lived certificates, the device keys registered for you, and any key in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys |
| The tunnel, WireGuard and its websocket fallback | The two ports open to the internet, udp/51820 and tcp/443 | Encrypted tunnel traffic only |
On demand: the Mutagen agent while a project syncs, the desktop stack while a desktop is open, and helper scripts the first remote prompt installs. What reaches Prized from the box is telemetry (vitals, listening ports, top processes, versions), never your files, terminal output, secret values, or agents' sign-ins (Security, Data retention).
Networking
- Inbound: only the tunnel's two ports, on the box's own public IPv4 address. SSH is never on the internet; you reach it, and every port you run, through the tunnel (Ports, Sessions, Credentials).
- Public ports: none. A box cannot open a port to the internet; to share a running server, mirror it to your machine and share from there.
- Outbound: not filtered.
- Public IP: not stable. It changes on a pause and on a region move;
prized sshfollows the box.
Something unclear or out of date?
Boxes
A box is a dedicated Linux machine in the size you pick, from Nano to Extra Large. Create and manage boxes from the CLI or the dashboard; connect to them with the CLI.
Snapshots
Point-in-time images of a box's disk. Take one by hand or on a schedule, restore it into a new box, fork a running box in one step, and save named templates new boxes start from.