Pre-Hardware Validation
The local path should prove contracts and deterministic inputs before the appliance can run.
Local Checks
Section titled “Local Checks”nix run .#checkThis covers Go tests, linting, protobuf lint/generation, and the public site build.
Nix Evaluation
Section titled “Nix Evaluation”make nix-checknix flake check evaluates the host and CellOS module composition. It does not boot the appliance.
Still Requires Hardware
Section titled “Still Requires Hardware”- Firecracker process launch;
- KVM access;
- jailer and seccomp behavior;
- TAP networking;
- virtio-vsock;
- CellOS boot;
- devcontainer runtime execution inside the guest.
Product Direction
Section titled “Product Direction”The appliance should be a NixOS-managed service stack. celld is the durable control daemon. Quadlet/systemd containers are a good fit for trusted host support services such as builders, registries, observability, and UI servers. Untrusted project workloads should still run inside Firecracker-backed cells.
The native Swift frontend should be a first-class Connect/protobuf client. It can provide host pairing, cell lifecycle controls, operation timelines, logs/events, service/port discovery, and policy prompts without depending on private appliance internals.