Languages and tools
Flox does not need per-language plugins: any toolchain in the Flox Catalog can be pinned in the manifest. The docs add per-language guides, a VS Code extension, a secrets pattern with plugins for four secret stores, and a run of blog walk-throughs for AWS, Ollama, GPU model serving, ComfyUI and Slurm.
This page is drawn from https://flox.dev/docs/languages/python, https://flox.dev/docs/languages/rust, https://flox.dev/docs/install-flox/ide-extensions, https://flox.dev/docs/concepts/secrets-management, https://flox.dev/docs/tutorials/cuda, https://flox.dev/docs/concepts/activation and the Flox blog posts linked in the tables below. Blog posts are dated by the source and can be older than the current CLI, so check a recipe against the current docs before promising it.
Languages
The docs carry one guide per ecosystem under docs/languages (https://flox.dev/docs/languages/python).
| Language | What the source says | URL |
|---|---|---|
| Python | Covers a new project and an existing project, with a hook that sets up a venv and installs from pyproject.toml, then a “Build with Flox” section | https://flox.dev/docs/languages/python |
| Node.js | A “Build with Flox” guide, including what to do when an app has no bundler and needs node_modules at runtime | https://flox.dev/docs/languages/nodejs |
| Go | A “Build with Flox” guide | https://flox.dev/docs/languages/go |
| Rust | Basic environment, target on PATH, cargo aliases, nightly compilers, then builds; the example environment lives in the floxenvs repository | https://flox.dev/docs/languages/rust |
| C/C++ | A “Build with Flox” guide | https://flox.dev/docs/languages/c |
| JVM | A “Build with Flox” guide | https://flox.dev/docs/languages/jvm |
| Ruby | A “Build with Flox” guide | https://flox.dev/docs/languages/ruby |
Each page points back to the builds concept so the same environment that develops the code also builds it (https://flox.dev/docs/concepts/builds). Migration guides exist for Homebrew and nvm (https://flox.dev/docs/tutorials/migrations/homebrew, https://flox.dev/docs/tutorials/migrations/nvm).
Say: “Whatever your stack, the toolchain is a pkg-path in the manifest; the language page shows the hook and build pattern.” Ask: “Which language and which package manager does the team use today?”
Editors, agents and shells
| Tool | What the source says | URL |
|---|---|---|
| VS Code | The Flox extension needs VS Code 1.87.0 or later and works with compatible editors | https://flox.dev/docs/install-flox/ide-extensions |
| VS Code (blog, 2026-01-30) | The extension “hooks into VS Code’s workspace and integrated terminal lifecycle”, so environments start pre-activated, with services and logs in the sidebar | https://flox.dev/blog/reproducible-dev-environments-in-your-workflow-with-flox-and-vs-code/ |
| Flox Skills for agents | flox, floxify and flox-debug skills teach AI coding agents to create environments, onboard a repo and diagnose resolution errors | https://flox.dev/docs/install-flox/ide-extensions |
| direnv | With use flox in .envrc the activation is in-place and runs hook.on-activate and [profile] scripts | https://flox.dev/docs/concepts/activation |
Flox also ships native auto-activation, which the 2026-07-29 post says replaces “hacking direnv” (https://flox.dev/blog/auto-activation-is-now-native-in-flox/).
Secrets managers
The docs say secrets “should never be hardcoded in a manifest.toml file” and recommend retrieving them just in time during flox activate, exported as environment variables that live only while the environment is active (https://flox.dev/docs/concepts/secrets-management). Plugins exist for 1Password, HashiCorp Vault, OpenBao and Infisical (https://flox.dev/docs/concepts/secrets-management).
| Tool | What the source says | URL |
|---|---|---|
| Secrets pattern | Authenticate once to a store, retrieve in an activation hook or plugin, secret gone when the shell exits | https://flox.dev/docs/concepts/secrets-management |
| 1Password plugin | Install flox/plugin-1password and declare references in [plugins.1password] | https://flox.dev/docs/concepts/secrets-management |
| Portable secrets CLI (blog, 2025-03-18) | Fetch credentials at runtime with a third-party manager across local dev, GitHub and AWS | https://flox.dev/blog/get-your-preferred-secrets-manager-in-a-portable-cross-platform-cli-toolkit/ |
| AWS secrets (blog, 2024-12-05) | Reproducible environments for managing AWS secrets and authenticating to AWS services | https://flox.dev/blog/flox-and-aws-taking-the-chaos-out-of-secrets-management/ |
AWS
| Tool | What the source says | URL |
|---|---|---|
| AWS SAM and Lambda (2024-12-02) | Install AWS CLI, AWS SAM and GitHub CLI from the Catalog, build and test Lambda functions locally, and containerize them for deployment; the walk-through lists aws-sam-cli (1.119.0) | https://flox.dev/blog/flox-and-aws-building-testing-and-deploying-lambda-functions-with-flox-and-aws-sam/ |
| AWS secrets (2024-12-05) | See the secrets table above | https://flox.dev/blog/flox-and-aws-taking-the-chaos-out-of-secrets-management/ |
The 1.119.0 figure is the version in a 2024 post, not a current claim [verify] against flox show aws-sam-cli.
LLMs and local inference
| Tool | What the source says | URL |
|---|---|---|
| Ollama (blog, 2025-02-04) | A pre-built flox/ollama environment: flox activate -s -r flox/ollama starts its services, including a Next.js chat UI at http://localhost:3000 | https://flox.dev/blog/get-deepseek-r1-on-your-laptop-with-ollama-and-flox/ |
| ComfyUI (blog, 2025-06-10) | Uses an environment from FloxHub to get ComfyUI running across systems, because setup instructions “vary across Linux, Mac, and Windows” | https://flox.dev/blog/run-comfyui-anywhere-with-flox/ |
| llama.cpp service | The auto-activation post shows a manifest that runs a llama.cpp proxy as a service with auto-start = true | https://flox.dev/blog/auto-activation-is-now-native-in-flox/ |
GPU, CUDA and model serving
| Tool | What the source says | URL |
|---|---|---|
| CUDA in the Catalog | Pre-built CUDA packages sit under the flox-cuda namespace; the CUDA page is the tutorial | https://flox.dev/docs/concepts/cuda-catalog-and-cache, https://flox.dev/docs/tutorials/cuda |
| GPU-optimized PyTorch (2026-03-16) | Build and publish targeted GPU or CPU builds; the post reports a CUDA PyTorch runtime “about 60% the size” of the nixpkgs one | https://flox.dev/blog/gpu-optimized-pytorch-builds-made-easy-with-flox-and-nix/ |
| Triton, vLLM, llama.cpp (2026-03-16) | Declarative model-serving environments for NVIDIA Triton, TensorRT, vLLM and llama.cpp that run on laptops, DGX Spark, Slurm or Kubernetes GPU nodes | https://flox.dev/blog/production-model-serving-using-nvidia-triton-vllm-llamacpp-with-flox/ |
| Slurm (2026-06-15) | A nanoGPT training environment pinned with Nix and carried from a MacBook to Slurm; “Platform teams maintain just one environment for Slurm (training) and Kubernetes (prod)” | https://flox.dev/blog/training-nanogpt-on-slurm-with-a-nix-pinned-environment/ |
| AI stacks as code (2026-07-15) | Reference patterns, including four modular AI environments composed into a declarative RAG stack, and a llama.cpp serving environment that answers questions about Flox docs and blog posts | https://flox.dev/blog/ai-stack-as-code-define-it-once-run-it-anywhere/ |
| Kubernetes without containers | Flox packages mounted into pods from the node cache | https://flox.dev/kubernetes/ |
The CUDA tutorial frames environments as “reproducible collections of tools, environment variables, services, and setup scripts” that give the same setup in local development, CI, a container or a deployed service (https://flox.dev/docs/tutorials/cuda). When a customer asks about ML hand-offs, lead with that portability claim and then ask which hand-off hurts most: laptop to cluster, cluster to production, or one team to another.
Say: “The same environment runs on the laptop, on Slurm and on a GPU node.” Ask: “Which CUDA version and GPU generation do your clusters run, and where does PyTorch come from today?”
Not settled by these sources: GPU support on any given customer driver stack. The CUDA page covers redistribution and cache use, not driver compatibility [verify] (https://flox.dev/docs/concepts/cuda-catalog-and-cache).
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