vms.clone(vm_id, snapshot_name)
Clones the source VM's state into a new VM. Returns a new vm_id and session_id. Source VM is not affected.
Clone running VMs for parallel eval fan-out
vms.clone(vm_id=...) snapshots a live VM and boots a copy. The source keeps running. Clone it N times to run evals, prompt variants, or policy experiments in parallel from identical starting state.
Full state
Disk + memory
Source unchanged
Non-destructive
Named snapshots
Per clone
live vm clone
$source = client.vms.create(wait=True)
↳vm_id: vm_base_12f0 | ready in 185ms
$client.execute('pip install eval-harness')
↳installed in 3.2s | state persisted
$client.vms.clone(vm_id='vm_base_12f0', snapshot_name='branch-0')
↳new vm: vm_eval_a | cloned from live state
$# repeat for branch-1, branch-2...
↳3 clones running | source vm unchanged
$
Capabilities
Identical starting state
Every clone boots from the same snapshot of the source. Installed packages, file state, environment variables — all copied.
Named snapshot per clone
Pass snapshot_name to label each clone's baseline. Makes it easy to trace which eval branch produced which result.
Fan out with a loop
Call vms.clone() in a for-loop to create N parallel branches. Each gets its own isolated Firecracker VM.
SDK reference
live-vm-clone.py
pythonClone + fan-out
1from instavm import InstaVM23client = InstaVM(api_key="sk_instavm_...")45# Prepare source VM with eval framework6source = client.vms.create(wait=True)7client.execute("pip install eval-harness && download-model")89# Clone into 3 parallel branches10branches = []11for i in range(3):12 clone = client.vms.clone(13 vm_id=source["vm_id"],14 wait=True,15 snapshot_name=f"eval-branch-{i}",16 )17 branches.append(clone)1819# Each branch has identical state — run different prompts20for branch in branches:21 print(branch["vm_id"]) # Independent VM
How it works
Prepare, clone, fan out
Prepare a source VM
vms.create() with your dependencies, data, and configuration. Run setup commands. Get it to the state you want to branch from.
Clone the live state
vms.clone(vm_id=..., snapshot_name='baseline') creates a snapshot and boots a new VM from it. Source VM keeps running.
Fan out N branches
Loop vms.clone() to create parallel VMs. Each runs independently with identical starting state for fair comparison.
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