fungi vm vs DevVM

Compare fungi vm and DevVM, two ways to run a coding agent in a Lima VM that mounts only your project folder. What each isolates, and when to pick which.

fungi vm is a command in Fungi’s fungi CLI. Run it in a project folder and it creates an Ubuntu VM with Lima that mounts only that folder, installs Spore and opens Shiitake, Fungi’s coding agent, inside it. You sign in with your Claude or ChatGPT subscription in the VM. DevVM (MIT) is a general tool that gives every project its own Lima VM with the project’s toolchains, for you or for a coding agent such as Claude Code, Codex or opencode. DevVM also limits the VM’s network and keeps your secrets outside it. Both are free software that runs on your own machine.

Who each one is for

Choose fungi vm if you use Shiitake and want it in a separate Linux VM with one command, using a plain Lima template you can read and run yourself.
Choose DevVM if you use Claude Code, Codex or opencode, want the VM to come with your project’s toolchains, or need the VM’s network limited and your tokens kept outside it.

What each one does

Job	`fungi vm`	DevVM
Agent in the VM	Shiitake	Claude Code, Codex or opencode, with settings imported from your machine
What the VM mounts	Only the project folder, writable	Only the project folder, or a separate clone of the repository with `devvm --clone`
Toolchains	Ubuntu 24.04 with Node.js 24 and Spore; install anything else yourself	Detects Node, Python, Rust, Go and .NET from the project’s files; optional Docker, Nix and desktop layers
Network	Full internet, your local network and services on your computer	An allowlist by default, with other tiers you can choose
Logins and tokens	Stored on the VM’s disk	Kept on your machine; a host proxy adds supported credentials to allowed requests
Platforms	Apple Silicon macOS 13.5+, Linux with KVM; Lima 2.0+	macOS 13+ or Linux, arm64 or x86_64; Lima 2.2+
Under the hood	A published Lima template; every `limactl` command is printed first	Its own CLI over Lima, with base images shared between VMs

Where DevVM is the better choice

Network limits. fungi vm is a separate VM, not a network sandbox. DevVM restricts which hosts a VM can reach by default.
Secrets stay home. DevVM keeps tokens such as your GitHub and Claude Code logins on your machine. With fungi vm, logins live on the VM’s disk.
A review step. devvm --clone keeps the agent’s work in its own clone until you fetch and review it.
Toolchains and other agents. DevVM sets up your project’s languages and runs the coding agent you already use.

Where `fungi vm` is the better choice

Shiitake on your subscription. fungi vm login signs Shiitake in with your Claude or ChatGPT subscription inside the VM.
Nothing extra to install. If you already have the fungi command and Lima, there is no other tool.
Plain Lima. The template is one YAML file you can read, and the guide shows the same steps with limactl alone.
Two layers. Shiitake’s Workspace sandbox also works inside the VM.

Try `fungi vm`

With Spore installed and Lima 2.0 or newer:

cd your-project
fungi vm

Run Fungi in its own VM explains what the VM can reach, how to sign in and how to stop or remove it.

Sources

Checked on 8 November 2026:

DevVM README and docs, release v0.1.0
Run Fungi in its own VM; its Lima template ships in the Spore package as dist/lima/fungi-vm.yaml