How fast does a Cua Space start on a Mac?

Driver on the host: rollout_bench create (Rust SDK example built from the release tag) talks to this release's own cua daemon (isolated CUA_HOME). Workload: a gVisor container in the built-in Linux runtime VM (Lima on Virtualization.framework, default 4 vCPU / 32 GiB) Space created from ghcr.io/trycua/linux:24.04-slim with --kind container --runtime gvisor --cpus 1 --memory-mb 1024 --headless (only cua-spacesd in the guest, no desktop).

Each sample = SandboxCreateOptions create call start → the Space's cua-spacesd answers a first sh -c true with exit 0 (create + attach + first exec). n=30, serial (one at a time), each Space deleted after its sample. The warm pool is off (CUA_POOL_AUTO=off), so every sample is a real create. One warm-up create before the samples is excluded (image pull/unpack and the golden snapshot it records: 13014 ms).

# On an Apple silicon Mac (macOS 26), with Rust (rustup) and git:
curl -fLO https://github.com/trycua/cua/releases/download/cua-spaces-v0.15.0/cua-spaces-0.15.0-darwin-universal.dmg
hdiutil attach -nobrowse -mountpoint /tmp/cua-dmg cua-spaces-0.15.0-darwin-universal.dmg
mkdir -p ~/bench && ditto "/tmp/cua-dmg/Cua Spaces.app" ~/bench/"Cua Spaces.app" && hdiutil detach /tmp/cua-dmg
git clone --depth 1 --branch cua-spaces-v0.15.0 https://github.com/trycua/cua ~/bench/cua
(cd ~/bench/cua/libs/cua && cargo build --locked --release -p cua-sdk --example rollout_bench --example channel_bench)
export PATH="$HOME/bench/Cua Spaces.app/Contents/MacOS:$PATH" CUA_HOME=~/bench/home DO_NOT_TRACK=1 CUA_TELEMETRY=0
RB=~/bench/cua/libs/cua/target/release/examples/rollout_bench
cua daemon start --foreground &   # with CUA_POOL_AUTO=off in its environment
IMG=ghcr.io/trycua/linux:24.04-slim
$RB create --prefix warm- --n 1 --image $IMG --kind container --runtime gvisor --cpus 1 --memory-mb 1024 --headless   # excluded warm-up
$RB create --prefix cold- --n 30 --conc 1 --image $IMG --kind container --runtime gvisor --cpus 1 --memory-mb 1024 --headless   # one JSON line per sample (ready_ms)

Driver on the host: rollout_bench create (Rust SDK example built from the release tag) talks to this release's own cua daemon (isolated CUA_HOME). Workload: a microVM, runtime vz (cua-vz, Virtualization.framework, one VM per Space, guest kernel 6.1.155) Space created from ghcr.io/trycua/linux:24.04-slim with --kind microvm --cpus 1 --memory-mb 1024 --headless (only cua-spacesd in the guest, no desktop).

Each sample = SandboxCreateOptions create call start → the Space's cua-spacesd answers a first sh -c true with exit 0 (create + attach + first exec). n=30, serial (one at a time), each Space deleted after its sample. The warm pool is off (CUA_POOL_AUTO=off), so every sample is a real create. One warm-up create before the samples is excluded (image pull/unpack and the golden snapshot it records: 435 ms).

# On an Apple silicon Mac (macOS 26), with Rust (rustup) and git:
curl -fLO https://github.com/trycua/cua/releases/download/cua-spaces-v0.15.0/cua-spaces-0.15.0-darwin-universal.dmg
hdiutil attach -nobrowse -mountpoint /tmp/cua-dmg cua-spaces-0.15.0-darwin-universal.dmg
mkdir -p ~/bench && ditto "/tmp/cua-dmg/Cua Spaces.app" ~/bench/"Cua Spaces.app" && hdiutil detach /tmp/cua-dmg
git clone --depth 1 --branch cua-spaces-v0.15.0 https://github.com/trycua/cua ~/bench/cua
(cd ~/bench/cua/libs/cua && cargo build --locked --release -p cua-sdk --example rollout_bench --example channel_bench)
export PATH="$HOME/bench/Cua Spaces.app/Contents/MacOS:$PATH" CUA_HOME=~/bench/home DO_NOT_TRACK=1 CUA_TELEMETRY=0
RB=~/bench/cua/libs/cua/target/release/examples/rollout_bench
cua daemon start --foreground &   # with CUA_POOL_AUTO=off in its environment
IMG=ghcr.io/trycua/linux:24.04-slim
$RB create --prefix warm- --n 1 --image $IMG --kind microvm --cpus 1 --memory-mb 1024 --headless   # excluded warm-up
$RB create --prefix cold- --n 30 --conc 1 --image $IMG --kind microvm --cpus 1 --memory-mb 1024 --headless   # one JSON line per sample (ready_ms)

Driver on the host: rollout_bench create (Rust SDK example built from the release tag) talks to this release's own cua daemon (isolated CUA_HOME). Workload: a full Linux VM, runtime qemu (QEMU 10.2.2 on HVF, Homebrew build found by the runtime check), image resolves to linux:24.04-slim-disk Space created from ghcr.io/trycua/linux:24.04-slim with --kind vm --cpus 1 --memory-mb 1024 --headless (only cua-spacesd in the guest, no desktop).

Each sample = SandboxCreateOptions create call start → the Space's cua-spacesd answers a first sh -c true with exit 0 (create + attach + first exec). n=30, serial (one at a time), each Space deleted after its sample. The warm pool is off (CUA_POOL_AUTO=off), so every sample is a real create. One warm-up create before the samples is excluded (image pull/unpack and the golden snapshot it records: 1699 ms).

# On an Apple silicon Mac (macOS 26), with Rust (rustup) and git:
curl -fLO https://github.com/trycua/cua/releases/download/cua-spaces-v0.15.0/cua-spaces-0.15.0-darwin-universal.dmg
hdiutil attach -nobrowse -mountpoint /tmp/cua-dmg cua-spaces-0.15.0-darwin-universal.dmg
mkdir -p ~/bench && ditto "/tmp/cua-dmg/Cua Spaces.app" ~/bench/"Cua Spaces.app" && hdiutil detach /tmp/cua-dmg
git clone --depth 1 --branch cua-spaces-v0.15.0 https://github.com/trycua/cua ~/bench/cua
(cd ~/bench/cua/libs/cua && cargo build --locked --release -p cua-sdk --example rollout_bench --example channel_bench)
export PATH="$HOME/bench/Cua Spaces.app/Contents/MacOS:$PATH" CUA_HOME=~/bench/home DO_NOT_TRACK=1 CUA_TELEMETRY=0
RB=~/bench/cua/libs/cua/target/release/examples/rollout_bench
cua daemon start --foreground &   # with CUA_POOL_AUTO=off in its environment
IMG=ghcr.io/trycua/linux:24.04-slim
$RB create --prefix warm- --n 1 --image $IMG --kind vm --cpus 1 --memory-mb 1024 --headless   # excluded warm-up
$RB create --prefix cold- --n 30 --conc 1 --image $IMG --kind vm --cpus 1 --memory-mb 1024 --headless   # one JSON line per sample (ready_ms)