What is a remote development environment?

A remote development environment is a machine elsewhere that holds your code, tools and processes, driven from your local editor.

On Runtime a sandbox is one: SSH, VS Code and JetBrains connect to it through the API, and it costs $0.03125 an hour at 2 vCPU and 4 GiB while you read and type. Runtime bills measured CPU, so the editor sitting open is not billed as two busy cores (pricing).

Why it matters for AI agents

When a coding agent edits and tests in a sandbox, a person often wants to open that exact machine, read what changed, run the failing test and take over. When the agent's environment is also a remote development environment, nothing has to be copied back to a laptop to be inspected. The reverse holds too: an agent can be given a person's environment to finish a task in, and the person's own machine never runs the agent's commands.

Remote development in facts

Property	What it means	On Runtime
Editor connection	The editor's server side runs on the remote machine	VS Code Remote - SSH and JetBrains Gateway via `<id>.runtime`
Shell	A login on the remote machine	`runtime sandbox ssh <id>`, as the user `runtime`, with `sudo`
Ports	A dev server reached from the local browser	`runtime sandbox port-forward <id> 3000`, any TCP port
Isolation	The remote machine is not your laptop	A Firecracker microVM with its own kernel
Idle time	What happens while nobody types	Pause keeps files, memory and processes for 1 to 365 days
Always on	A machine that does not stop	`persistent: true` on a paid sandbox renews its own lease
Base system	What is installed	Ubuntu 24.04, Python 3.12, Node.js 24, Bun, git, gcc

VS Code describes Remote - SSH as a way to "open a remote folder on any remote machine, virtual machine, or container with a running SSH server", with its extensions running on that remote machine.

Connect your editor

Install the SSH entry once; then every sandbox is a host named by its id or its name:

Terminalruntime sandbox ssh config --installruntime sandbox ssh my-env            # a shellssh my-env.runtime                    # plain OpenSSH, scp and rsync tooruntime sandbox port-forward my-env 5173

In VS Code, run Remote-SSH: Connect to Host and enter my-env.runtime. The sandbox opens no port to the internet: each connection is a WebSocket through Runtime's API, authenticated with your key (SSH and editors).

To make the environment in code and find it again by name:

TypeScriptimport { Runtime } from "withruntime";const runtime = new Runtime();const env = await runtime.sandboxes.create({  name: "my-env",  getOrCreate: true,  idlePauseSeconds: 1800,});console.log(env.id, env.state);

getOrCreate returns the sandbox that already has the name, woken if it was paused, and idlePauseSeconds pauses it after half an hour with no request.

Keep it running while you work

An open SSH connection does not keep a sandbox running: when its lease pauses or stops it, the connection ends. Extend the lease for a long session, or create a paid sandbox with persistent: true, whose lease renews itself while credit lasts. Connecting to a paused sandbox wakes it, as any command does.

Sources

VS Code: Remote Development using SSH, read 25 September 2026

Facts on this page were checked on 25 September 2026.