Images

Images carry the BoxHaven VM runtime so new boxes boot ready to use: the agent runtime, tmux, Docker, the GitHub credential helper, and the BoxHaven machine agent are already installed. Plain Ubuntu fallback images are not considered fully bootstrapped for normal CLI use.

Providers create boxes from the backend's configured default snapshot: BOXHAVEN_REMOTE_IMAGE_DIGITALOCEAN (or legacy BOXHAVEN_REMOTE_IMAGE) for DigitalOcean, and BOXHAVEN_REMOTE_IMAGE_HETZNER for Hetzner. Team images are optional overrides selected when creating a box.

Team Images

Images belong to the active team. Snapshot one of the team's boxes from the console Images page or the CLI:

bh image ls
bh image create work            # snapshot the box "work" into a team image
bh create work-clone --image <image-id>
bh image rm <image-id> --force

bh image create snapshots one of your own boxes in the active team; the backend prefixes the image name with boxhaven-remote-. The snapshot starts in creating status and can be selected for new boxes after the provider reports it as available.

Without --provider, image commands use the backend's default provider. When creating a box without --image, BoxHaven uses the provider's configured default image. Without --force, bh image rm prompts before deleting the image and refuses to continue in noninteractive terminals.

Keep the previous image around until a new box has been created from the new image and verified.

Rebuilding The Default Image

Remote runtime dependencies belong in the golden VM image. Self-hosters and operators rebuild the default image with the image builder after changing cmd/bh/assets/remote-vm-install.sh; see Self-Hosting for the builder workflow. The checked-in installer pins Codex CLI 0.144.1 for deterministic compatibility with the configured gpt-5.6-sol model.