Volt

Containers on Linux without the Docker tax. One binary, no daemon, no runtime, no bullshit.

Volt uses systemd-nspawn — the container runtime that's been sitting in your kernel since 2013 — and wraps it with sane defaults, Landlock security, and a CLI that doesn't require a CS degree to operate.

curl -fsSL https://get.armoredgate.com/volt | sh
volt run -it ubuntu:24.04 bash

That's it. No service to start. No socket to configure. No 400MB daemon eating RAM in the background.

Why

Docker solved a real problem in 2013. Then it mass-gained in complexity for a decade. Today, running a container requires a privileged daemon, a storage driver, a networking plugin, and a prayer. Podman dropped the daemon but kept everything else.

We wanted something different:

• No daemon. Volt talks to systemd directly. Your init system already manages services — why add another one?
• Landlock by default. Every container gets filesystem access control from the first syscall. Not opt-in. Not "add this flag." Default.
• ~50ms cold starts. Because systemd-nspawn doesn't need to set up overlay filesystems and negotiate with a storage driver.
• One binary. volt is a statically-linked Go binary. It depends on systemd and a Linux kernel. That's the list.

What works today

# The basics
volt run -d --name web nginx:alpine
volt ps
volt logs web
volt exec web sh
volt stop web
volt rm web

# Images
volt pull node:20-alpine
volt images
volt rmi old-image:v1

# Port forwarding
volt run -d --name api --port 3000:3000 my-api:latest

# Compose (multi-container stacks)
volt compose up              # reads volt-compose.yaml
volt compose status
volt compose down

# Networking
volt network create backend --subnet 10.50.0.0/24
volt run -d --name db --network backend postgres:16

# Storage
volt storage status
volt storage gc              # clean up unused layers

What's coming

• VoltVisor — VM management (KVM + QEMU) under the same CLI. Run Windows guests, cross-arch emulation, and microVMs alongside your containers. Early builds working internally.
• Stellarium CAS — Content-addressed storage backend. Deduplicates identical layers across images. Working prototype, not yet integrated into the main CLI.
• GitOps deploys — volt deploy --from git@... for declarative infrastructure.

These aren't vaporware — they're in active development with internal builds. But they're not ready for other people to use yet, so they're not in the install.

Compose format

name: my-stack
services:
  web:
    image: nginx:alpine
    ports: ["8080:80"]
  api:
    image: node:20
    memory: 512M
  db:
    image: postgres:16
    memory: 1G
    volumes: ["pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data"]

If you've used Docker Compose, this will look familiar. That's intentional — migration shouldn't require learning a new config language.

Security model

Volt's security isn't a feature you enable. It's structural.

Every container runs with:

• Landlock LSM — path-based filesystem access control
• seccomp-bpf — syscall allowlist (78 syscalls, everything else denied)
• Cgroups v2 — memory, CPU, and I/O limits
• Linux namespaces — PID, net, mount, user, UTS, IPC isolation

No --privileged. No --cap-add SYS_ADMIN. If you need those, you probably need a VM, and VoltVisor will handle that when it's ready.

Migrating from Docker

# If you have Docker Compose files, they mostly work:
volt compose -f docker-compose.yaml up

# Pull the same images:
volt pull docker.io/library/nginx:alpine

# Same muscle memory:
volt ps                      # like docker ps
volt logs -f container-name  # like docker logs -f
volt exec -it name bash      # like docker exec -it

The CLI is intentionally similar to Docker's where it makes sense. We're not being different for the sake of it.

Building from source

git clone https://git.armoredgate.com/ArmoredGate/volt.git
cd volt
make build
sudo make install

Requires Go 1.22+ and a Linux system with systemd.

Project status

Volt is in active development. The container runtime (Voltainer) is stable and used internally in production. The VM layer (VoltVisor) and content-addressed storage (Stellarium) are in development.

If you find bugs, open an issue on git.armoredgate.com/ArmoredGate/volt or reach out at support.armoredgate.com.

License

Source-available under the Armored Gate Public Source License (AGPSL) v5.0.

Copyright 2026 Armored Gate LLC.