Cloud API Reference

The Cloud API is the hosted REST interface for smol cloud.

• Base URL: https://api.smolmachines.com
• Generated OpenAPI: smolmachines.com/openapi.json
• Interactive client: API Explorer

Use the generated OpenAPI document for the routes and schemas it includes. It is generated from the service, so it still lists volume routes; those are not a supported part of the API and a machine created with a mounts field comes up without the storage. Specialized operations and newly added fields can land ahead of the website’s generated snapshot, so use this page and the linked lifecycle guides for behavior that the schema does not yet describe.

Authentication

Create an API key in the console and send it as a bearer token:

Authorization: Bearer smk_your_key_here

For shell examples:

export SMOL_CLOUD_TOKEN="smk_your_key_here"
export SMOL_CLOUD_URL="https://api.smolmachines.com"

Keep API keys on trusted servers. Use separate keys for development, CI, and production, and revoke keys that are no longer needed.

Core resources

Machines

Machines are persistent cloud microVMs. The core lifecycle is:

POST   /v1/machines
GET    /v1/machines
GET    /v1/machines/{id}
POST   /v1/machines/{id}/start
POST   /v1/machines/{id}/stop
DELETE /v1/machines/{id}

Machine creation accepts an OCI image or a .smolmachine registry reference as its source. Specify CPU, memory, network policy, environment, working directory, lifecycle limits, and other supported fields in the create request.

When resources is omitted, a machine currently defaults to 4 vCPUs and 8192 MB of memory. When network is omitted, outbound access defaults to open — set network.mode explicitly (blocked or allowCidrs) when egress policy matters. Note a blocked machine also cannot pull its image, which runs in-guest, unless the image is already cached on its node. Larger machines cost more, so pass resources explicitly (for example {"cpus": 1, "memoryMb": 256}) rather than relying on the default. Disks can be configured up to 16 TiB where capacity is available. Check the OpenAPI document for the current request limits.

Commands and sessions

Run a command with:

POST /v1/machines/{id}/exec

command accepts a shell string or an argv array. Requests can also include cwd, env, stdin, timeoutSeconds, stream, and background for detached execution. Verify the generated schema for the deployment you target before relying on optional fields.

The response carries each output stream twice: as UTF-8 text (stdout/stderr, capped at 1 MiB) and as byte-exact base64 (stdoutB64/stderrB64). Pass ?output=text or ?output=b64 to receive only one family and halve the response size; the default returns both.

Sessions preserve a working directory and environment across related exec calls:

GET    /v1/machines/{id}/sessions
POST   /v1/machines/{id}/sessions
POST   /v1/machines/{id}/sessions/{sessionId}/exec
DELETE /v1/machines/{id}/sessions/{sessionId}

Interactive terminal

The console’s terminal is a WebSocket you can open yourself, to give your own product a real shell in a machine: full-screen programs, colors, prompts, and resizing all work.

GET /v1/machines/{id}/exec/interactive   (WebSocket upgrade)

Query parameter	Meaning
cmd	Program to run, as a single path with no arguments. Defaults to /bin/sh. command is accepted too.
cols, rows	Initial terminal size.
access_token	Your API key, for clients that cannot set an Authorization header on a WebSocket, such as browsers. Servers should send the bearer header instead.

The key needs the machine:exec scope. A stopped machine is started before the terminal opens.

Once connected, frames mean:

Direction	Frame	Meaning
you → machine	binary	Keystrokes, as raw bytes
you → machine	text {"type":"resize","cols":120,"rows":40}	The terminal was resized
you → machine	text {"type":"stdin","data":"ls\n"}	Text input; any other text frame is also typed as input
machine → you	binary	Terminal output, including ANSI escape codes
machine → you	text {"type":"exit","code":0}	The program exited; the socket closes next

This maps directly onto xterm.js:

import { Terminal } from '@xterm/xterm';

const term = new Terminal();
term.open(document.getElementById('terminal'));

const url = new URL(`wss://api.smolmachines.com/v1/machines/${machineId}/exec/interactive`);
url.search = new URLSearchParams({
  cmd: '/bin/bash',
  cols: String(term.cols),
  rows: String(term.rows),
  access_token: apiKey,
}).toString();

const ws = new WebSocket(url);
ws.binaryType = 'arraybuffer';
const encoder = new TextEncoder();

ws.onmessage = (event) => {
  if (typeof event.data === 'string') {
    const msg = JSON.parse(event.data);
    if (msg.type === 'exit') term.write(`\r\n[exited with ${msg.code}]\r\n`);
  } else {
    term.write(new Uint8Array(event.data));
  }
};
term.onData((data) => ws.send(encoder.encode(data)));
term.onResize(({ cols, rows }) => ws.send(JSON.stringify({ type: 'resize', cols, rows })));

From a server, the same session with Node’s ws package:

import WebSocket from 'ws';

const ws = new WebSocket(
  `wss://api.smolmachines.com/v1/machines/${machineId}/exec/interactive?cmd=/bin/sh&cols=120&rows=40`,
  { headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.SMOL_CLOUD_TOKEN}` } },
);
ws.on('open', () => ws.send(Buffer.from('uname -a\n')));
ws.on('message', (data, isBinary) => {
  if (isBinary) process.stdout.write(data);
  else if (JSON.parse(data.toString()).type === 'exit') ws.close();
});

Behavior to plan for:

• Closing the socket ends the program. Nothing keeps running once you disconnect. For a session you can come back to, set cmd to a script that runs exec tmux new -A -s main (with tmux installed in the machine) and reconnect to the same session.
• A connection lasts at most one hour. Reconnect before then; with tmux, reconnecting lands you back where you were.
• Quiet sessions are kept alive. The server pings every 30 seconds, which WebSocket clients answer automatically. A client that stops answering for 90 seconds is treated as gone and its session ends, so a machine is not kept awake by a connection nobody is using.
• Several terminals can be open at once. Each has its own session and does not block the others or exec calls.
• Treat a key in a browser as visible. Anyone who can read the page can read an access_token, and query strings can appear in proxy logs. Have your backend mint a key for that user with "scopes": ["machine:exec"] and "expiresInDays": 1 through POST /v1/apikeys, and revoke it when the session ends.

For command output without a terminal, such as an agent running a build, POST /v1/machines/{id}/exec with "stream": true returns output as Server-Sent Events and is simpler to consume.

Files

The API supports file upload and download for a machine. Use the current OpenAPI or API Explorer for the path shape and request encoding.

Upload targets follow the machine’s filesystem layout. Write to /workspace or another path on the storage disk when the file must survive a stop and start; /tmp is memory-backed and is empty after the machine restarts. An upload whose target resolves through a symlink into a memory-backed path fails instead of writing the file. See Cloud Lifecycle, Storage, and Networking.

Operational endpoints

The Cloud API also provides endpoints for:

• Running Python or JavaScript through /code
• Machine events and logs
• Per-machine usage and cached images
• Sharing a machine through scoped share links
• Branching a branchable machine
• Exporting a machine to a .smolmachine artifact

Use the OpenAPI document or Explorer to inspect the exact routes, request bodies, and feature availability for your account.

Usage and account

Use /v1/usage for usage over a time range and GET /v1/machines/{id}/usage for one machine’s totals and cost. The API also exposes account and billing-meter endpoints where enabled. Plan limits and pricing can change; use the pricing page for current public rates.

Metering semantics to build billing on:

• Uptime, base, and disk accrue in near real time. CPU and memory accrue through a metering rollup that samples every few minutes, so a mid-life /usage read is a lower bound on the eventual cost — not the settled number.
• Stop and delete take a synchronous final metering sample, so usage is fully settled the moment a machine ends.
• DELETE /v1/machines/{id}?includeUsage=true returns 200 with the settled usage and cost in the response body — the recommended pattern for short-lived machines (create, run a job, delete, bill from the DELETE response). Without the flag, DELETE returns 204 as before.
• GET /v1/machines/{id}/usage keeps working for 30 days after a machine is deleted.

The cloud-usage skill packet reads these totals and reconciles one machine’s bill against its uptime and the published rate.

API keys

The API supports listing, creating, and revoking keys:

GET    /v1/apikeys
POST   /v1/apikeys
DELETE /v1/apikeys/{id}

The plaintext value of a newly created key is shown once.

Readiness and lifecycle

Do not treat state: "started" as application readiness. Poll GET /v1/machines/{id} until ready is true before executing dependent work or connecting to a published service. ready flips once the machine answers a probe — its published port accepts connections, or, for machines with no published port, its guest agent responds — normally within a few seconds of start; readyAt records when. Exec does not require readiness: it auto-starts a stopped machine and waits for the agent itself.

Starting a machine blocks until the boot completes, which normally takes a few seconds. Pass ?detach=true to return 202 Accepted immediately and boot in the background, then poll GET /v1/machines/{id} until the state is started or error. Under a burst this keeps a client’s own request timeout from cancelling a start that is still queued. exec has the same option under a different name: background in the request body.

Stopping a machine preserves its stored state. Deleting it removes the machine. See the lifecycle page for billing and storage details.

Plan limits

Three ceilings apply to every tenant, and all three come from the plan the account is on rather than from the platform:

• How many machines you may hold — counted across every state, not just running ones, so a stopped machine still occupies a slot until it is deleted.
• How many may run at once — counted over started and creating.
• How large one machine may be — vCPU, memory, and disk, applied per machine at create time.

Read your own ceilings rather than assuming them. GET /v1/account returns effectiveMaxMachines alongside the plan it came from, and the plan object carries maxConcurrentMachines, maxCpus, maxMemoryMb, and maxDiskGb:

curl -fsSL https://api.smolmachines.com/v1/account \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SMOL_API_KEY"

The published plans and their ceilings are listed on the pricing page. Limits differ between plans; the per-unit rates do not, so moving up a plan buys headroom rather than a different price.

Exceeding a ceiling is refused at create time with 422 and a body naming the plan, the limit, and where to change it — nothing is started, so nothing is charged:

machine count quota exceeded: your Standard plan allows 20 machines; upgrade at https://smolmachines.com/pricing
concurrency limit reached: your Standard plan allows 20 machines running at once; upgrade at https://smolmachines.com/pricing

Errors and request IDs

Use the HTTP status code first. Error bodies may be plain text. For guest exit codes and SDK error patterns, see Error handling.

Common statuses include:

• 400: invalid request
• 401: missing or invalid credentials
• 403: insufficient scope
• 404: resource not found or not owned by the caller
• 409: conflicting resource
• 402: billing or budget restriction
• 422: quota, capacity, or validation constraint
• 429: rate limit exceeded
• 500: server error
• 503: service or feature unavailable

Every response includes x-request-id. A safe client-provided ID is echoed; otherwise the service generates one. Record it with the status and response body when reporting a failed request.

Branches and snapshots

Branch routes are specialized cloud operations. They do not move a running local VM into cloud or provide a portable cross-architecture restore format. Machine snapshots are not implemented in the cloud API: the snapshot routes return 501. To capture a stopped machine’s disk state, export it to a .smolmachine artifact instead (POST /v1/machines/{id}/export, or smol cloud export).