Yay! I've had this pain for years now, I'm glad someone is finally addressing it. You need a lot more features (the most important being a decent IDE or editor integration with either emacs or something) before I'll use it, but, I'll definitely keep an eye on the project.
Yes, once you installed virtualbox and our command line tool, stkr, a virtual machine will be downloaded automatically and a stack of your choice will be set up locally.