Machines
What a box is made of: its size and disk, Ubuntu 24.04 on a dedicated x86_64 virtual machine, preinstalled software, and the Prized processes beside your work.
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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 |
Pick a size by label, short name, or id (prized box new --size Small; xs, s, m, l, xl; nano, micro, lite, flow, pro, max, ultra) or in the create form, and change it with a resize. Rates and plans are on Billing.
- Nano and Micro are burstable, 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, Medium and larger stop clean (Pause and resume).
- The free credit starts Nano through Small, one box at a time, and a box started on it can be resized within those four; Medium and larger come with a plan.
Disk
One encrypted volume is the box's only disk, holding your home directory, Docker images, and the system.
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Type | SSD (EBS gp3) at baseline performance, always encrypted, as are its snapshots |
| Size | The Disk column above, 40 GB on a Nano to 2 TB on an Extra Large |
| Growing | Sizing up grows the disk in the same restart (Resize) |
| Shrinking | Never. A box that kept a bigger disk than its size pays 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, fully upgraded when the box image was built. Your 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, only letters, digits, and hyphens, up to 31 characters (
Josésigns in asjose). It isdoppelwhen nothing usable survives, when the name collides with a system account such asgit, and on a Small box that was ready before you asked for it (Boxes); a box restored or forked from a snapshot keeps its source box's user.prized box infoshows it. - Your user services outlive your session.
systemctl --userservices you enable start when the box boots and keep running after you log out (except on infinite storage boxes). - Sandboxes work.
bwraphas the AppArmor grant the Claude Code and Codex command sandboxes need; Ubuntu's restriction on unprivileged user namespaces otherwise stays on.
Preinstalled software
A fresh box has all of this from first boot, signed in to nothing; 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, no sudo needed |
| 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. 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 or a shared host; Docker 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 |
| US East (Virginia) | us-east-1 | virginia |
| US East (Ohio) | us-east-2 | ohio |
| Europe (Frankfurt) | eu-central-1 | frankfurt |
A box lives in one region and can move. A size costs the same in every region; a snapshot stays in its box's region. The CLI takes a region by AWS id or by name; CLIs older than these regions know only oregon and california by name, and take the AWS id for the rest.
What runs on the box
Beside your own processes, a fresh box runs these Prized services as ordinary systemd units (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; updates itself | A read-only view of the system and process table; 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. The box sends Prized telemetry only (vitals, listening ports, top processes, versions), never your files, terminal output, secret values, or agents' sign-ins (Security, Data retention).
Networking
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Inbound | Only the tunnel's two ports, on the box's own public IPv4 address. SSH is never on the internet: it and every port you run are reached through the tunnel (Ports, Sessions, Credentials) |
| Public ports | None: no port you run on the box takes connections from the internet. Ports can be shared at a link; see Ports |
| Outbound | Not filtered |
| From your machine | WireGuard over UDP 51820. Where UDP is blocked, the same tunnel goes over HTTPS via the Prized relay (term.prized.dev) or the box's port 443, whichever gets through, and through your proxy if set (HTTPS_PROXY, or a Mac's system proxy) (Networks that block the tunnel) |
| Public IP | Not stable: it changes on a pause and on a region move; prized ssh follows the box |