Skip to main content
Research Preview — Droid Computers is currently available only to select organizations. There is a limit of one computer per user.
Droid Computers are persistent compute environments that Droid can connect to and work on across sessions. Unlike ephemeral cloud templates that are destroyed after each session, computers retain state — installed packages, files, running services, and configuration all persist between sessions.

​
Platform-managed computers

The fastest way to get started is to create a computer directly from the Factory web app.
  1. Navigate to Settings → Droid Computers.
  2. Click Create.
  3. Give your computer a name.
Factory provisions a cloud computer (4 CPU, 8GB RAM, 6GB swap) automatically. Provisioning progress is tracked live in the UI through the following steps:
  1. Creating computer — allocating the cloud computer
  2. Setting up user — creating the factory-user account with sudo access
  3. Configuring environment — writing environment config, SSH keys, and service files
  4. Installing Droid — downloading and installing the Droid binary
  5. Starting services — launching the SSH and Droid daemon services
If any step fails, the computer status changes to Error and the failed step is shown in the UI. You can delete the computer and retry. Once provisioning completes, the computer status changes to Active and it becomes available for use in sessions. Platform-managed computers auto-pause when idle and auto-resume when a new session targets them.

​
Managing computers

From the computer detail page in Settings → Droid Computers, you can:
  • Rename a computer
  • Delete a computer (this stops and removes it permanently)
  • View live resource metrics and daemon version (see Monitoring)

​
Bring Your Own Machine (BYOM)

You can register any machine — VPS, cloud VM, on-prem server, etc. — as a Droid Computer.

​
Prerequisites

  • A machine running Linux or macOS
  • Droid CLI installed on the machine
  • Authenticated with Factory (/login in an interactive session)
  • Network access to Factory APIs, specifically relay.factory.ai (no inbound ports need to be opened)

​
Setup

Register the machine: 
droid computer register [name]
Then start the daemon so Factory can connect to the machine: 
droid daemon --remote-access
The --remote-access flag tells the daemon to connect through Factory’s secure relay service, so no inbound ports need to be opened on your machine.
Only one computer registration is allowed per machine at a time. Run droid computer remove first or delete the machine through the settings page if you need to re-register.

​
CLI commands

​
General

CommandDescription
droid computer listList all computers (shows name, ID, status; marks current machine)
droid computer ssh <name>Open an interactive SSH session to any computer

​
BYOM setup

CommandDescription
droid computer register [name]Register the current machine as a BYOM computer
droid computer removeUnregister the current machine and clean up local config

​
SSH options

The ssh subcommand supports the following flags:
  • --proxy — Run as a stdio proxy (for use as a ProxyCommand)
  • --port <port> — Target port on the remote machine (default: 22)
  • --debug — Enable verbose connection logging

​
Using computers in sessions

​
Web app

In the new session modal, select the Computer tab, pick an active computer, set a working directory (e.g., /home/factory-user/projects/my-app), and start your session. Connection status (connecting / connected / error) is shown in real time.

​
Slack

Computers can also be selected when creating sessions via the Slack integration.

​
Monitoring

Click on any computer in Settings → Droid Computers to open its detail page. For platform-managed computers, the detail page shows live resource metrics:
  • CPU usage — percentage utilization over time
  • Memory usage — used vs. total memory
  • Disk usage — used vs. total disk space
The detail page also shows the current daemon version and connection status. Possible computer statuses are:
  • Provisioning — initial setup in progress
  • Active — ready for sessions
  • Error — provisioning or runtime failure

​
Updating the daemon

The computer detail page displays the running daemon version alongside the latest available version. When an update is available, an Update button appears. Clicking it triggers a remote update — the daemon downloads the new binary, restarts, and reconnects automatically. For BYOM machines, you can also update the Droid CLI manually by downloading the latest version and restarting the daemon process.

​
Git credentials

Git credentials are configured automatically for authenticated repository access on platform-managed computers. When you add new GitHub App installations or change repository access, git credentials are refreshed automatically on the next session connection. BYOM computers use whatever git credentials are already configured on the machine.

​
SSH & IDE integration

droid computer ssh <name> establishes a secure WebSocket tunnel through the daemon — no direct SSH port exposure is required. Factory generates and manages a dedicated Ed25519 SSH key pair (stored in ~/.factory/.ssh/), separate from your personal SSH keys. The public key is injected on each connection for passwordless authentication.

​
VS Code Remote-SSH

You can use droid computer ssh as a ProxyCommand for VS Code Remote-SSH: 
Host factory-mycomputer
  ProxyCommand droid computer ssh mycomputer --proxy
  User factory-user
  IdentityFile ~/.factory/.ssh/id_ed25519
  IdentitiesOnly yes
  StrictHostKeyChecking no
  UserKnownHostsFile /dev/null
This lets you open a full VS Code remote session on your Droid Computer.
The proxy mode automatically strips factory- prefixes from the Host name when resolving the computer. For example, a Host entry named factory-mycomputer will connect to the computer named mycomputer.

​
Security

  • Firewall — Platform-managed computers use iptables rules to restrict inbound traffic to the daemon port only; all other ports are blocked by default. Note that factory-user has passwordless sudo access and could modify these rules. For a hard network-level boundary, use relay mode, which blocks all public traffic at the infrastructure level.
  • SSH hardening — Root login and password authentication are disabled.
  • Relay mode — BYOM computers route all traffic through Factory’s relay service, so no public ports are exposed. Platform-managed computers can also be configured to use relay mode at the organization level for stricter network isolation.
  • Git credentials — Configured automatically per-user for authenticated repository access on platform-managed computers.