Instructions for Colima, a macOS tool that runs a small Linux virtual machine to provide Docker, Containerd, or Incus container environments. Containers package software so it can run in an isolated environment.

It helps start and stop runtimes, check status, manage profiles, connect to the Linux virtual machine, forward an SSH agent for builds, and troubleshoot Docker contexts on macOS.

It helps when Docker cannot connect to its background service or when the container environment is not configured correctly. It also covers separate Colima profiles and Docker contexts.

colima — Skill by technicalpickles

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods

npx agentmods add skills/technicalpickles/pickled-claude-plugins/colima

Any agent

npx skills add technicalpickles/pickled-claude-plugins --skill colima

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/technicalpickles/pickled-claude-plugins

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install dev-tools, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 7 skills, 2 commands.

Per session 66 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 751 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5	$0.00066	$0.00751
Opus 5	$0.00033	$0.00376
Sonnet 5	$0.00013	$0.00150
Haiku 4.5	$0.00007	$0.00075

Measured 3d ago against content hash 6a14a46cd9a3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

colima scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 3d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

plugins/dev-tools/skills/colima/SKILL.md · 87 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 87 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Colima

Overview

Colima provides container and VM runtimes (Docker, Containerd, Incus) on macOS with minimal setup. It runs a Linux VM and exposes the chosen runtime to the host.

Use this skill when:

Docker commands fail ("Cannot connect to Docker daemon")
Starting/stopping container runtime on macOS
Managing multiple Docker profiles/contexts
Troubleshooting container environment issues
Need SSH agent forwarding for Docker builds
Running incus on macOS (system containers or VMs with nested virtualization)

Not for: Docker Compose or Kubernetes clusters.

Quick Reference

Operation	Command
Start	`colima start` or `colima start <profile>`
Start with SSH agent	`colima start <profile> -s`
Stop	`colima stop` or `colima stop --force`
Status	`colima status -p <profile>`
List profiles	`colima list`
SSH into VM	`colima ssh` or `colima ssh -- <cmd>`
SSH with chained commands	`colima ssh -- bash -c "cmd1 && cmd2"`
Get socket path	`colima status -p <profile> --json \| jq -r .docker_socket`

Docker Context Basics

Colima creates Docker contexts per profile:

Profile default → context colima
Profile work → context colima-work

# Switch context (global - affects all terminals)
docker context use colima-work

# Override per-session
export DOCKER_CONTEXT=colima-work

# Override per-command
docker --context colima-work ps

For details, see references/docker-contexts.md.

Common Issues

Docker daemon not connecting?

colima status - is it running?
docker context list - right context selected?
See references/troubleshooting.md for more

Need more VM resources?

colima stop && colima start --cpu 4 --memory 8

"Broken" status after restart?

colima stop --force && colima start

References

references/ssh-commands.md - SSH command syntax, chaining, escaping
references/docker-contexts.md - Context switching, DOCKER_HOST, socket paths
references/profile-management.md - Creating, configuring, deleting profiles
references/troubleshooting.md - Common issues and solutions
references/common-options.md - Flags, VM types, resource configuration
references/incus-runtime.md - Running incus (containers + VMs with nested virt) on Apple Silicon

Read the full file on GitHub · 87 lines

Files

What ships with it

12 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

3d ago First seen · 87 lines · 66 tokens per session scan A 6a14a46cd9a3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

colima is a skill published in the GitHub repository technicalpickles/pickled-claude-plugins (10 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 66 tokens to every session and 751 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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