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v2.0 planning (pluggable VM drivers, AI helpers, etc.) #3712

@AkihiroSuda

Description

@AkihiroSuda

Here is a highlight of the features tentatively planned for v2.0 (ETA: September? October?).

Still subject to change.

Pluggable VM drivers

The support for VM driver plugins is being implemented by @unsuman as a part of the GSoC 2025 program:
https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/issues?q=label%3Agsoc%2F2025

The plugin API will be marked experimental in v2.0, and will be stabilized in v2.x or maybe in v3.0+.

The existing vz and qemu drivers will remain built-in at least in v2.0 to avoid potential regressions.

New drivers such as krun (w/ GPU acceleration) will be implemented as separate plugins:

Integration with AI agents

Two kinds of integration should be explored:

  • AI inside Lima
  • Lima inside AI

AI inside Lima

Lima v2.0 will have features to help running AI agents such as codex, gemini, and claude inside the VM so as to avoid breaking the host files.

$ limactl start --mount-none template://claude
$ cd ~/some-project
$ limactl shell --sync-host-workdir claude claude
Changed files:
- foo.go
- Makefile

⚠️Accept the changes?
→ Yes
  No
  View the changed contents

Still not sure whether we should have VM templates such as template://claude, as we have never included proprietary software in our template set.
Maybe acceptable as template://nonfree/claude ?

Lima inside AI

Lima may provide MCP tools (lima_run_shell_command, lima_read_file, ...) to an AI agent running on the host for sandboxing shell command executions and file I/O operations.

It is desired that eventually there will be the industry-standard API for sandbox technologies. Proposal:

Other changes

Disable /tmp/lima mount

/tmp/lima will probably no longer be mounted by default:

This will allow multiple user accounts to run Lima instances independently.

Consolidate diffdisk and basedisk to save the disk space

~/.lima/INSTANCE/{diffdisk,basedisk} will be consolidated to save the disk space, for newly created instances:


See also https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/milestone/59

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