> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.vers.sh/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# What is Vers?

> fork() for machines. Branch a live VM — memory, processes, sockets and all — in 258µs. It's git for running compute.

**Vers is `fork()` for machines.** Branch a live VM — memory, processes, sockets and all — in under a third of a millisecond. Commit a state, restore it anywhere, run a thousand agent trajectories in parallel.

If you've ever wanted `git branch` for an entire running system, that's Vers.

<CardGroup cols={4}>
  <Card title="Branch p50" icon="bolt">
    **258.3 µs**
  </Card>

  <Card title="Branch p99" icon="gauge-high">
    **329.2 µs**
  </Card>

  <Card title="End-to-end" icon="stopwatch">
    **\< 1 ms**
  </Card>

  <Card title="Isolation" icon="shield">
    hardware-level, per-VM kernel
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

Sub-millisecond branching is the load-bearing fact. It moves branching from a batch operation to a primitive you call in a tight loop.

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Ask Claude about this page" icon="sparkles" href="https://claude.ai/new?q=Please%20read%20https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.vers.sh%2Foverview%20and%20help%20me%20understand%20what%20Vers%20is.">
    Opens Claude.ai with a prompt referencing this page's URL.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Read as Markdown" icon="file-lines" href="/overview.md">
    Raw Markdown you can paste into any AI tool.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## The idea in 30 seconds

```bash theme={"theme":{"light":"min-light","dark":"min-dark"}}
# 1. Boot a root VM
vers run

# 2. Get to an interesting state — install deps, load data, run a script
vers connect

# 3. Branch from here. Parent keeps running. Child inherits everything.
vers branch --alias try-plan-a

# 4. Snapshot a known-good state as a commit
vers commit

# 5. Restore that commit anywhere, later. Time-travel for infra.
vers run-commit c1a2b3c4
```

Four primitives: `run`, `branch`, `commit`, `run-commit`. That's the whole mental model.

## Start here

<CardGroup cols={3}>
  <Card title="Core concepts" icon="book-open" href="/concepts/overview">
    Projects, VMs, HEAD, branches, commits. Read this before writing any code.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Install the CLI" icon="download" href="/installation">
    One-line curl install. macOS and Linux today.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Quickstart" icon="play" href="/quickstart">
    Your first VM and your first branch, end-to-end.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## Common use cases

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Agent swarms" icon="robot" href="/tutorials/agent-swarms">
    Fork one golden VM into N parallel agents. Build a full-stack app in \~60 seconds.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Parallel web testing" icon="code-branch" href="/tutorials/parallel-web-testing">
    Navigate to a form once, branch to test every input path simultaneously.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Database state testing" icon="database" href="/tutorials/database-state-testing">
    Snapshot a seeded DB, branch per migration, compare outcomes in parallel.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Bad-deploy rollback" icon="arrow-rotate-left" href="/concepts/commits">
    Commit before risky changes. If the deploy blows up, restore in one call — memory and all.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## Keep going

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Why Vers?" icon="scale-balanced" href="/compare">
    How Vers differs from sandbox platforms, hypervisors, and schedulers.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Architecture" icon="sitemap" href="/architecture">
    VM tree, copy-on-write branching, content-addressable commits.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Essays" icon="pen-nib" href="/essays/overview">
    Long-form arguments for branchable compute — stateless's limits, time-travel debugging, content-addressable everything.
  </Card>

  <Card title="CLI reference" icon="terminal" href="/cli-reference/overview">
    Every command, every flag, every example.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## Plug these docs into your AI editor

Vers hosts a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for this documentation. One click and Cursor or VS Code can search and read every page directly.

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Add to Cursor" icon="square-terminal" href="cursor://anysphere.cursor-deeplink/mcp/install?name=vers-docs&config=eyJ1cmwiOiJodHRwczovL2RvY3MudmVycy5zaC9tY3AifQ">
    Installs `vers-docs` as a remote MCP server.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Add to VS Code" icon="code" href="https://vscode.dev/redirect/mcp/install?name=vers-docs&config=%7B%22type%22%3A%22http%22%2C%22url%22%3A%22https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.vers.sh%2Fmcp%22%7D">
    Installs into your `.vscode/mcp.json`.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

Claude Code, Claude Desktop, and manual setups are documented in the [installation guide](/installation#add-these-docs-to-your-ai-editor).