D9010 VmAppDirections, not promises
Roadmap
What works today, what is designed, and what we are exploring. Each item says what is already true and what is still missing.
Platforms
| Host | How | Status |
|---|---|---|
| macOS 13+, Apple silicon | Apple Virtualization framework | Built and tested |
| Windows 10/11 (x64 and ARM) | Hyper-V host compute service | Designed, not built |
| Linux (x86_64 and arm64) | KVM with a small VMM | Later |
| macOS on Intel | Virtualization framework | Possible; needs x86_64 kernel and runtimes |
The app format, message protocol, SDK and catalog are the same on every host. Porting means writing one VM launcher per hypervisor. See Platforms.
Next up
- The public app catalog. Search, trending and publishing, with apps installed from inside the launcher so the permission sheet always comes first.
- Publisher signatures. So you can verify who made a package, not only that it is unchanged.
- Traffic transparency. Per-domain views and blocking, and an opt-in full inspection of an app's network traffic.
- A file access log. Every file an app touches, with the process and time, kept for as long as you choose.
Directions worth building toward
- A safer home for serious apps. Logic and secrets live in the engine, not in page scripts. A script injected into the window finds no network to send data to, and no secrets to read.
- Local backends. Work that needs a rented server only to hide code from page scripts can run on the user's machine, in a VM, with no server and no domain.
- Offline-first apps that sync. The engine is a natural local server: it works offline, and syncs with the only host you allowed.
- GPU access. Window graphics (WebGPU) work today. Inside the VM, local AI models can use the Mac's GPU through an experimental path. A general Vulkan path is a larger project.
Limits. The window still uses Chromium, so against browser-engine attacks this is as strong as a browser, not stronger. Anything running on a user's machine is controlled by that user, so authoritative state (balances, anti-cheat, data shared between users) must stay on a server. Read the vision document for the full discussion.