# Bhatti

8 Hacker News commenters recommended Bhatti and 0 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free, self-hostable Firecracker orchestrator that runs isolated VMs for AI agents and pauses idle ones to free memory.

## Why people recommend it

- Used for AI agent workloads (3 comments): "I've been running it daily on a Hetzner server for my AI agents' browser automation" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47664788)) "I have been using it for orchestrating parallel work" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47809220)) "I now run bhatti for my own agents" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47996645))
- Positive first impressions (3 comments): "Bhatti looks really cool! Well done!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47874646)) "this looks amazing at first blush" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47876505)) "I am really enjoying bhatti!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47824528))
- Easy to use, ergonomic CLI (2 comments): "Bhatti is easy to use, so powerful, and handy!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48016336)) "bhatti's cli looks very ergonomic! great job!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47809597))
- Self-hosted, you own the runtime (2 comments): "I've been running it daily on a Hetzner server for my AI agents' browser automation" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47664788)) "owning the runtime means I own everything I build on top of it too" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48133613))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Firecracker](https://hackerapproved.com/p/firecracker.md): 78 recommend
- [smolvm by smolmachines](https://hackerapproved.com/p/smolvm.md): 28 recommend
- [smolmachines](https://hackerapproved.com/p/smol-machines.md): 27 recommend
- [libkrun](https://hackerapproved.com/p/libkrun.md): 13 recommend
- [Local-First Linux MicroVMs for macOS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/local-first-linux-microvms-for-macos.md): 8 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Bhatti", https://hackerapproved.com/p/bhatti/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).