Crabbox Quickstart

Crabbox runs your repository's commands on a disposable box, a container on your own machine, or a remote machine you lease. It syncs your working tree, runs one command, streams the output back, and exits with that command's code.

The loop

lease -> sync -> run -> read output -> stop

• Lease a box from a provider. --provider local-container uses Docker or Podman on your own machine: no account, no login, no spend.
• Sync your current checkout onto it. Crabbox builds the file list from Git, so the directory must be a repository.
• Run one command there. Its exit code becomes Crabbox's exit code.
• Read the streamed output, and optionally timing and test-result files.
• Stop the box. A one-shot run does this for you; a warm box does not.

Install and check

crabbox --version                  # already installed? skip the install
brew install openclaw/tap/crabbox  # or github.com/openclaw/crabbox/releases
crabbox doctor --provider local-container

doctor with a provider is the readiness check that matters: it names the container runtime, the leases you already hold, and the image= your commands will run inside.

First run, no account needed

With Docker or Podman running, this works in any Git repository with no config file, no login, and no cloud spend:

git init                                  # only if not already a repository
crabbox run --provider local-container -- uname -a

Crabbox provisioned a container, synced the dirty checkout, ran the command there, streamed its output, propagated its exit code, and deleted the lease. Budget 30-45 seconds once the base image is local, nearly all of it container startup; the very first run adds a one-time image pull.

The box is bare