Comment by furryrain

Yes, NixOS containers can be run in:

* declarative mode, where your guest config is defined within your host config, or

* imperative mode, where your guest NixOS config is defined in a separate file. You can choose to reuse config between host and guest config files, of course.

It sounds like you want imperative containers. Here's the docs: https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/#sec-imperative-contai...