Sandboxes with the right persistence and http routing make excellent dev servers. I have about a million dev servers I just use from whatever computer / phone I happen to be using.
It's really useful to just turn a computer on, use a disk, and then plop its url in the browser.
I currently do one computer per project. I don't even put them in git anymore. I have an MDM server running to manage my kids' phones, a "help me reply to all the people" computer that reads everything I'm supposed to read, a dumb game I play with my son, a family todo list no one uses but me, etc, etc.
Immediate computers have made side projects a lot more fun again. And the nice thing is, they cost nothing when I forget about them.
This is exactly what I built shellbox.dev for.
SSH in, it resumes where you left off, auto-suspends on disconnect. $0.50/month stopped.
I have the same pattern - one box per project, never think about them until I need them.
I'd love to know more about that "help me reply to all the people" one! I definitely need that.
You will be astonished to know it'a a whole lot of sqlite.
Everything I want to pay attention to gets a token, the server goes and looks for stuff in the api, and seeds local sqlites. If possible, it listens for webhooks to stay fresh.
Mostly the interface is Claude code. I have a web view that gives me some idea of volume, and then I just chat at Claude code to have it see what's going on. It does this by querying and cross referencing sqlite dbs.
I will have claude code send/post a response for me, but I still write them like a meatsack.
It's effectively: long lived HTTP server, sqlite, and then Claude skills for scripts that help it consistently do things based on my awful typing.