forkd vs mirage
The two are close in size: 2.8k stars for forkd, 3.6k for mirage. Over the days we have tracked them forkd moved +50.8% and mirage +16.6%, so forkd is growing faster right now.
mirage leads on context depth and noise control and customization and model freedom and setup ease. forkd does not take any axis by a clear margin.
Stars and commit dates come from our own daily tracking. The six axes are read off each project's documentation by our review pipeline, so they describe what a project says about itself, not what we measured in its code.
Where they stand today
Provides near-fork(2) microVM spawn and live BRANCHing via snapshot copy-on-write, enabling KVM-isolated agent fan-out with millisecond-scale latency.
- Stars
- 2.8k
- Tracked growth
- +50.8%
- Maturity
- ●●●●●
- Last commit
- 2d ago
- Language
- Rust
- License
- Apache-2.0
- Cost to run
- Free, self-hosted
Mounts dozens of services (S3, Slack, Gmail, databases, etc.) side-by-side as a single POSIX-like virtual filesystem so agents can use bash-native pipelines across backends.
- Stars
- 3.6k
- Tracked growth
- +16.6%
- Maturity
- ●●●●●
- Last commit
- 24m ago
- Language
- TypeScript
- License
- Apache-2.0
- Cost to run
- Free, self-hosted; external API costs apply
Six axes, head to head
Each axis runs 0 to 5. The label under a score is what that project's own docs claim, not a category average.
| Axis | forkd | mirage |
|---|---|---|
Context depth How much of your codebase it sees before it answers: the open diff, the diff plus related files, or the whole repository. | ●●●●● Diff only | ●●●●● Whole workspace |
Noise control How it keeps output volume down — severity thresholds, deduplication, incremental runs over new commits only. | ●●●●● None | ●●●●● Basic filters/config |
Customization How far it bends to your team: custom rules, prompts, style guides, per-path config. | ●●●●● CLI / REST options | ●●●●● Extensible commands |
Privacy Whether your code stays on your own infrastructure: fully local, self-hostable, or cloud API only. | ●●●●● Fully local | ●●●●● Self-hostable |
Model freedom Whether you can point it at any provider, or it is wired to one. | ●●●●● No model support | ●●●●● Multiple adapters |
Setup ease What it takes to get a first useful run out of it. | ●●●●● Kernel + root req | ●●●●● CLI / SDK quickstart |
Which one to pick
Pick forkd if…
Ultra-fast fan-out — pick forkd when you need hundreds of warmed, KVM-isolated microVM sandboxes and the ability to snapshot/branch a running agent mid-thought.
Pick mirage if…
Unified VFS — pick Mirage when you want agents to access remote services and local files through one POSIX-style filesystem, enabling cross-backend commands, portable workspaces, and embeddable runtimes.
- Context depth: Whole workspace (5/5 against 1/5)
- Noise control: Basic filters/config (3/5 against 1/5)
- Customization: Extensible commands (5/5 against 3/5)
- Model freedom: Multiple adapters (3/5 against 1/5)
- Setup ease: CLI / SDK quickstart (4/5 against 2/5)
What people want from each one
deeplethe/forkd
Hacker News: Forkd: Fork() for AI Agent MicroVMs drew 2 points and 0 comments.
strukto-ai/mirage
Hacker News: Mirage – A programming framework for building type-safe, modular systems drew 317 points and 88 comments.
Questions people ask
Is forkd better than mirage?
mirage leads on context depth and noise control and customization and model freedom and setup ease. forkd does not take any axis by a clear margin. forkd is worth picking when ultra-fast fan-out — pick forkd when you need hundreds of warmed, KVM-isolated microVM sandboxes and the ability to snapshot/branch a running agent mid-thought.
Which of forkd and mirage keeps my code private?
forkd: Fully local (5/5). mirage: Self-hostable (4/5).
What does each one cost to run?
forkd: Free, self-hosted. mirage: Free, self-hosted; external API costs apply.
Full profiles: deeplethe/forkd and strukto-ai/mirage. Everything else in Runtimes & sandboxes.