Introduction

Goblin Mode is a command-line tool that spins up a per-project development virtual machine (VM). The goal: after you’ve run gob up, you can SSH in and start developing. Goblin Mode is opinionated — it sets things up just the way the author likes them.

Here’s what Goblin Mode does when you run gob up:

• A Debian VM is started on Hetzner.
• Tailscale is set up for VPN connectivity.
  • You can configure which ports to expose with tailscale serve.
• cloud-init configures the VM. Packages are installed with apt and cargo-binstall.
• The local git repository is pushed to the VM.
  • The VM repo is added as a remote called gob in the local repo, so you can sync changes back with git fetch gob.
• Goblin Mode detects the programming language for your project and installs the toolchain.
  • Supported languages: Rust (rustup/cargo) and Python (uv).

Once you’re done, destroy the VM with gob down. A snapshot is saved by default, so you can pick up where you left off.

Author

Goblin Mode was created by Miikka Koskinen. I’ve written about it here on my blog. It’s software that I made for myself.

License

MIT. See LICENSES and REUSE.toml for full details.