Aether Launches Cloud Devbox for Autonomous Coding Agents with Live Oversight

Aether has launched a platform that runs autonomous coding agents — Claude Code, Codex, or OpenCode — in cloud devboxes you can watch and steer in real time. The pitch is simple: bring your own API keys, and Aether handles the infrastructure, scheduling, and collaboration surfaces, while you keep full control.

Each task spins up a Firecracker microVM in about five seconds, with zero cost while idle. Billing is per-second on credits (one credit equals six minutes on a Medium devbox), and encryption uses AES-256-GCM with per-user keys injected only for the session duration. Aether claims no access to your keys or code beyond what's needed to run the session.

The platform integrates deeply with developer workflows: mention an Aether agent in a Slack thread or a Linear issue, and a devbox spins up, posts progress, and waits for your reply to steer or stop it. Scheduled prompts let you run nightly triage or chase flaky tests on a cron-like cadence. For GitHub, a review agent reads every diff, leaves comments, and iterates until it approves — with recorded Playwright videos embedded in PR descriptions.

Aether's CLI (brew install then aether run) streams a cloud task into your terminal, and the whole devbox is accessible via SSH or a REST API with WebSocket feeds for live workspace events. Skills can be codified in a SKILL.md file at the repo level, enforcing conventions across agents.

The pricing model is deliberately different from black-box agent services: you pay only for compute, not for model usage at markup. Plans start with a free tier and scale up to a fleet-oriented plan for teams. Aether directly competes with services like those from Devin or Factory, but emphasizes transparency and manual oversight.

For developers already paying for Claude Code or similar tools, Aether turns a single-agent laptop setup into a parallel fleet of isolated, always-on agents. The open-devbox approach means you can jump in mid-task, type commands, and take the wheel — a level of control that separates it from more autonomous agents.