Mini's computer

A Linux computer with 2 CPUs and 4 GB of memory, with a desktop, a browser, and OneKit running on it, signed in as you. We rent it from E2B, a US company that runs each one as its own isolated virtual machine. Yours is yours; no other OneKit account touches it.

It works the way your own computer does. The same approval rules, the same Full Access switch, the same models, the same tool switches. OneKit copies those settings to it and re-copies them within seconds of a change, so there is one place to set them: your own app.

You never start it by hand. Send Mini a message from your phone while your computer is off and the machine wakes first, then answers. Waking takes a few seconds. A sleeping machine keeps its memory and its disk, so it comes back where it stopped, with the same windows open.

It goes back to sleep on its own:

• Running a job: it stays awake. Nothing cuts a turn off halfway.
• Waiting on you: it sleeps straight away and sends you a notification. A machine parked on an approval is doing nothing, and you might not look at your phone for an hour. Answering wakes it and it carries on.
• You are watching the screen: it stays awake while you watch, and sleeps after 30 minutes of nothing happening.
• Nothing at all: 10 minutes, then sleep.

Sleep is what keeps it cheap. Time only counts while the machine is awake, so one that puts itself to bed is the point rather than a limitation.

By default Mini runs a job on your own computer whenever that computer is on, and on Mini's computer when it is not. You can pin it in Settings, under Mini from anywhere: Automatic, Always my computer, or Always Mini's computer. Pick Always my computer and ask for something while it is off, and Mini says so rather than quietly moving.

A line under the answer always tells you which machine ran it. You can also give a scheduled run to Mini's computer, and the machine wakes a couple of minutes early to be ready for it.

Open Mini's computer on your Mac or your phone and press Watch. You see its real screen, live, with a one-line caption of what Mini is doing. You are a viewer at first: you can see everything and click nothing.

Take control gives you its mouse and keyboard. Mini's hands stop while you hold them, and any tool that touches the screen refuses rather than fighting you for the pointer. Hand control back and the job carries on from where it paused. Open it while the machine is asleep and you see the last picture it took of itself, with a Wake button.

The screen is not on the open internet. The link is minted when the machine wakes, dies when it sleeps, and only your signed-in account can ask for it.

Mini's computer holds none of your passwords, on purpose. Your Passwords vault is not copied to it and the Passwords tool is switched off there.

So logins are take-over. When a site asks Mini to sign in, the job stops and tells you. You take control of the screen and type it yourself. What you type stays in that machine's browser profile until you reset or delete it, and that profile is not protected by a keychain. Sign in to what you need, and treat anything you leave signed in there as something a reset will throw away.

Creating, resetting or deleting Mini's computer asks for a 4-digit passcode. So does approving a new device, and any card where Mini is about to send something. You set the code once for your account, on either your phone or your desktop, and every device after that adopts it.

Touch ID and Face ID are shortcuts to that same code, never a replacement, so a phone with Face ID off works exactly the same way. The code never reaches our servers. It stays wrapped inside the keychain of each device that holds it, which is also where the wrong-guess counter lives: five wrong tries locks that device for a minute, ten for an hour, and fifteen wipes its key, so the device has to be set up again with a fresh sign-in. Clearing the app's data does not reset the count.

Change the code from Settings, under Mini from anywhere. Your other devices ask for the old one once, then re-wrap under the new one.

Its page in the app shows one line: This month: 2 h 10 m of 10 h · 0 credits used.

That line shows how much machine time your plan includes each calendar month. Only awake minutes count, rounded up per waking, so a job that takes 40 seconds counts as a minute and a machine asleep all week counts nothing. Under 30 minutes left, you get a line saying so before the machine wakes.

During the beta, machine time is not charged. If that changes, we'll tell you the rate before it starts. The AI models that run there use your OneKit credits exactly as they do on your own computer, and one credit is $0.10 of AI use.

• Update appears when we have shipped a newer machine image. It gives you a fresh system and carries your work folder across. Your files are kept. If they cannot be moved, your old machine is left exactly as it was and we try again another time.
• Reset wipes the machine and builds a clean one. A switch in the dialog decides whether your work folder survives. Everything else goes, including whatever was signed in inside its browser. Use it when the machine is in a state you cannot explain.
• Delete Mini's computer destroys the machine, its disk, its saved states and the screenshot it kept. Nothing comes back. Deleting your OneKit account does the same thing.

Reset and Delete ask for your passcode. Update does not: it keeps your files, so there is nothing to lose by pressing it.

It reaches your own OneKit account: your conversations, your calendar, your mail (reading and drafting, where sending still asks you), pages and documents, the web, and the files in its own work folder. It is your app, so it reaches what your app reaches.

It does not reach:

• Your Passwords vault. Nothing from it is ever copied to the machine.
• The saved credentials for your connected accounts. Those stay encrypted in OneKit's backend, and a tool that needs one is handed a short-lived token that lives in memory and is never written down.
• Files on your own Mac or PC. It only sees its own disk.
• Your meetings. Recording and meeting notes are your own computer's job.
• Anybody else's account, machine or files.

Inside the machine, the browser runs as a second, lower-trust user that cannot read OneKit's configuration, its sign-in, or the key the machine signs with. A web page that breaks out of the browser lands somewhere with nothing worth taking.

Every card Mini raises is answered from your phone or your desktop. Nobody is sitting at that keyboard, so it cannot approve itself.

The legal detail is in the Privacy Policy and the Terms of Service. Anything else, write to support@onekit.co.