Alpha: for testing only; it does not yet meet the Cyber Resilience Act’s requirements. Status and limits →

What you need

Vaicoa is in a closed alpha: named testers only, each with an alpha key that ends on 31 March 2027. Without one, vai login puts you on the waitlist and stores nothing.

Accounts

An alpha key, through vai login: a sign-in in the browser that hands vai the licence once.
Two Hetzner Cloud projects, each with an API token that can read and write:
- the hub’s project, for the hub and your production and staging servers;
- the twins’ project, for twins and recovery tests. A separate project keeps the production token away from every twin. Without it there are no twins until you set it later with vai twin settings.
An S3 bucket in the hub’s project (Hetzner Object Storage) for the hub’s continuous backup, and one S3 key pair for it. vai up makes the bucket when it is missing.

On your machine

vai for macOS, Linux or Windows. Until the release download is built In progress, vai up takes the hub’s release as a directory (--dist).
A place for the device key. The owner of a hub must hold a key that asks a person for every use (level presence): a TPM with a PIN on Windows and Linux, the Secure Enclave on a Mac through the ownpaas app. A Secure Enclave store in vai itself is In progress. Read keys and devices.
Optional: the hcloud CLI’s contexts. vai up reads a token from --token-file, --hcloud-context, HCLOUD_TOKEN or a prompt. Tokens go to Hetzner and to your hub, never to disk on your machine and never to Vaicoa.

For your first environment

A Git repository with your environment: Kubernetes-style YAML files that Podman runs, and optionally a .vaicoa/seed.yaml with seed data for twins. A read-only token if it is private. See your first environment.
Optional: a DNS zone in Hetzner’s Cloud DNS in the hub’s project, if twins should get names like task-42.twins.example.com with one wildcard certificate. Hetzner’s Cloud DNS takes whole domains only, no subzones (measured 20 October 2026). Without a zone, vai open twin reaches a twin through the hub’s tunnel instead.

What it costs

The software costs nothing. Hetzner bills you for the hub’s server (€7.13 a month incl. VAT for vai up’s default cpx02 with 1 vCPU and 1 GB, Hetzner’s API, 23 October 2026), for the servers the hub creates, and for the bucket. See pricing.

Next: create a hub with vai up.