You can optimize things. I have a github action that starts stops a fast google cloud vm for our builds. It only gets used about 3 minutes per build. We maybe have a few dozen builds per month. So that's a few hours of run time. The rest of the time the vm is stopped and not billed (except for storage, which is cents per month at most). It's a simple debian vm so it boots in about 20 seconds.

VMs are expensive if you leave them running 24/7 but the logic to start/stop them is pretty easy. There's no need.

Anyway, you need to balance this against the payoff. Agentic coding is useful enough that it beats spending your own time. And that includes waiting time for the relatively slow/underpowered containerized environments that some tools would use by default. I use codex web and codex cli (with a qemu vm so I can use the --yolo flag). Codex web is a bit limited with memory and CPU. Some of my slower builds are taking forever there. To the point where most of the time it consumes is just waiting for these builds to happen.

With a bit of plumbing, you can do things like the author describes pretty easily. IMHO this needs to be better integrated into tools. With Github you have the option to run your own runners. I don't think codex/claude web have similar options currently. But with the cli versions, you can get more creative if you know your tools. And if you don't, use LLMs to drive them for you. It's mostly just about expressing what you want and how you want it.

If you are already paying $200-500/m… and you are doing the work of 10 people… I can totally see the value.

I’ll check the Terragonlabs option.

Lots of options for startups right now, selling pickaxes! I’m waiting for a better terminal experience, personally. I can’t deal with 30+ poorly named windows. I need to be able to search for that one thread I was working on yesterday…