Daytona Environments¶

Manage ephemeral, disposable development sandboxes with Daytona — a platform for cloud-based dev environments. This project ships module 61-daytona.sh, which installs the current Daytona CLI, writes a declarative environments registry, and installs a daytona-env wrapper that bridges the two.

2026 status: Daytona is a platform product (managed sandboxes). The legacy daytonaio/workspace-manager OSS project was archived in June 2026 — do not use the old get.daytona.io installer. This module installs from the current github.com/daytonaio/daytona releases.

Install¶

The module runs as setup step 61 (step_daytona). Opt out with SKIP_DAYTONA=true.

# Homebrew (macOS)
brew install daytonaio/cli/daytona

# Direct binary (Linux/macOS) — done automatically by module 61
# https://github.com/daytonaio/daytona/releases/latest/download/daytona-<os>-<arch>

Auth uses the DAYTONA_API_KEY environment variable only. Never commit it:

export DAYTONA_API_KEY="dtn_..."
# or via a git-ignored .env file

Two setup styles¶

The wrapper supports both an imperative CLI flow and a declarative config flow — pick either, or mix them.

(a) Imperative CLI¶

daytona login                       # authenticate (DAYTONA_API_KEY)
daytona-env list                    # show registry entries
daytona-env create dev-minimal      # compose + run daytona create
daytona-env status                  # daytona list
daytona-env delete <id|name>        # remove a sandbox
daytona-env prune                   # delete ALL sandboxes (confirms first)

Raw daytona create flags you can use directly:

Flag	Meaning	Example
`--cpu`	vCPUs	`--cpu 2`
`--memory`	RAM (GB)	`--memory 4`
`--disk`	Disk (GB)	`--disk 10`
`--auto-stop`	Idle minutes before auto-stop	`--auto-stop 15`
`--env K=V`	Environment variable (repeatable)	`--env NODE_ENV=development`
`--label L`	Label (repeatable)	`--label dev`
`--snapshot S`	Build from a snapshot	`--snapshot debian-slim`
`--dockerfile/-f D`	Build from a Dockerfile	`--dockerfile ./Dockerfile`
`--target T`	Target region/provider	`--target us`

Create a snapshot from the same Dockerfile your docker-compose build uses, so sandboxes mirror production images.

(b) Declarative config¶

~/.config/opencode/daytona/environments.json (generated by module 61):

{
  "version": 1,
  "managed_by": "opencode_initializer@61-daytona",
  "note": "Auth via DAYTONA_API_KEY env var only — never store secrets here.",
  "defaults": { "cpu": 2, "memory_gb": 4, "disk_gb": 10, "auto_stop_minutes": 15, "target": "us" },
  "environments": [
    { "name": "dev-minimal", "image": { "snapshot": "debian-slim" }, "labels": ["dev"] },
    { "name": "dev-node", "image": { "dockerfile": "./Dockerfile" }, "env": { "NODE_ENV": "development" }, "auto_stop_minutes": 30 }
  ]
}

Field	Type	Description
`version`	int	Registry schema version
`managed_by`	string	Provenance marker
`defaults`	object	Fallbacks for cpu/memory_gb/disk_gb/auto_stop_minutes/target
`environments[]`	array	One entry per environment
`.name`	string	Environment name (matches `daytona-env create <name>`)
`.image.snapshot`	string	Build from snapshot (mutually exclusive with dockerfile)
`.image.dockerfile`	string	Build from Dockerfile path
`.env`	object	Key/value pairs → repeated `--env` flags
`.labels`	array	Strings → repeated `--label` flags

Override the registry location per project:

DAYTONA_ENVIRONMENTS=./.daytona/environments.json daytona-env list

OpenCode integration¶

The opencode-daytona plugin (installed separately) lets the agent spawn sandboxes. Git-sync caveat: agent branches inside a sandbox are disposable — commit work back to the main repo before the sandbox is pruned, or the changes are lost with it.

Ephemeral-by-default best practices¶

Auto-stop / auto-delete — set short auto_stop_minutes; prune idle sandboxes with daytona-env prune.
Volumes for data — persist state in mounted volumes, not the sandbox root filesystem.
Network isolation — for untrusted or third-party code, run with network access blocked; grant it only when a build genuinely needs it.
One sandbox, one task — treat a sandbox as disposable; never accumulate state you would mind losing.