Alternatives
Products that do what npm i -g hotcell does
Local sandboxes for AI agents on your Mac, Linux, bare metal
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Hey HN, I built SuperHQ, an app that lets you run coding agents in local sandboxes (powered by Shuru). No custom UI wrapping the agents, they run as CLI/TUI like they were designed to. It just provides you the tools most of us (okay, maybe just me?) needed for running multiple coding agents in parallel without worrying about breaking your system or work environment. Each agent runs in its own microVM. You mount your projects in, writes go to a tmpfs overlay so your host is never touched, and you get a unified diff view to accept or discard changes. API keys never enter the sandbox, they…
Apr 2026 · superhq.ai
- 10SO
SmolVM is an open-source local sandbox for AI agents on macOS and Linux. I started building it because agent workflows need more than isolated code execution. They need a reusable environment: write files in one step, come back later, snapshot state, pause/resume, and increasingly interact with browsers or full desktop environments. Right now SmolVM is a Python SDK and CLI focused on local developer experience. Current features include: - local sandbox environments - macOS and Linux support - snapshotting - pause/resume - persistent environments across turns Install: ``` curl -sSL…
Apr 2026 · github.com
- 11BM
Wrapper around Apple's macOS sandbox-exec tool, which usually sandboxes native apps. It is "allow-first" i.e. it will not overprotect everything, just crucial information and therefore allows most tools to run without issues. Limiting is done using a .gitignore like file schema. Further TOML config options available. I built it because Docker sandboxing requires config and planning. Build in sandboxing of AI tools instead is limited to the very tools themselves, instead I wanted to have a simple cage around Claude running inside VSCode. Also needed to protect files inside a folder like…
Apr 2026 · github.com
- 12WB
Over the past few months, as we scaled our internal AI Agents, we hit a dead end: Running LLM-generated arbitrary code in Docker is basically running naked on security due to container escape risks. But using full traditional VMs takes minutes to boot and eats too much memory to support high-density concurrency. We loved the developer experience of SaaS sandboxes on the market, but they are closed-source, expensive, and have too high a barrier to entry for self-hosting. So, our team decided to build our own. After months of grinding, using RustVMM and KVM, we built a blazing-fast,…
Apr 2026 · github.com
- 13MO
Hey everyone, We're excited to introduce MarinaBox, an open-source toolkit for creating isolated desktop/browser sandboxes tailored for AI agents. Over the past few months, we've worked on various projects involving: 1. AI agents interacting with computers (think Claude computer-use scenarios). 2. Browser automation for AI agents using tools like Playwright and Selenium. 3. Applications that need a live-session view to monitor AI agents' actions, with the ability for human-in-the-loop intervention. What we learned: All these scenarios share a common need for robust infrastructure. So,…
2024 · github.com
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We have built Tarit as a hypervisor built from ground up for running AI agent and RL environments. It is based on rust-vmm and can be used as a replacement for firecracker. Firecracker was built to serve a different need of primarily serverless compute and hence does not have primitives like live snapshots without pausing the VM operations. We also provide a basic orchestrator that handles placement of the microVMs, creating clusters with HA, maintaining a warm pool of VMs, and takes care of setting up networking and monitoring. Our benchmarks on a metal instance shows an acquire VM from…
Jul 2026 · github.com
- 15SB
Hi HN, We are building Sanbox, a platform for running AI agents in isolated and resumable sandboxes. We use the OpenCode SDK as the harness, support reusable templates, and have a CLI that works with Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, CI, or your terminal. Each sandbox has MicroVM isolation, a persistent filesystem, and live trail of run events. Can also self-host if required for security/compliance. It's on the roadmap to add network ACL, secrets managements, LLM cost tracking & observability. We are also happy to build custom integrations or triggers for specific use cases. For example,…
Jul 2026 · sanbox.cloud
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2025 · cognitora.dev
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- 18LA
A Python SDK for sandboxed filesystem operations, built on just-bash, AgentFS, and Pyodide. Provides AI agents with a persistent, isolated environment backed by SQLite.
Jan 2026 · github.com
- 19MO
Hi HN, I'm Jonathan. My co-founder, Thomas, and I started building Mistle in Feb. We saw larger tech companies like Ramp (Inspect) and Stripe (Minions) build this internally and thought an open source version should exist. We made a few very intentional decisions when working on this: 1. Credentials are kept out of the sandbox. Authorized access goes through a proxy, so agents do not directly receive credentials. 2. The harness is not our problem. We're not going to tackle things like memory, self-learning. 3. No magic. Configurations are explicit. You can bring your own keys for models,…
May 2026 · github.com
- 20IM
I made my first macOS utility app that ships with a bundled Gemma 4 model, specifically the Gemma E4B one. It made my app DMG have 5.3 GB in size, but I think it is a small size for the power that this free local model can provide. It runs fine on CPU, but can also run on Apple Silicon GPU, although I did not notice any performance improvements with GPU (tested on a M5 chip). I think these local lightweight and multimodal models will open multiple possibilities for new software tools where privacy is essential.
May 2026 · snapname.app
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Hi HN, AgentBox is an SDK for running coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode) inside sandboxes (Docker, E2B, Modal, Daytona, Vercel). One API. Swap the agent or the sandbox and your code doesn't change. Think of it as what the AI SDK did for LLMs, but for agent + runtime. Most wrappers call agents in non interactive mode (claude --print, codex exec). AgentBox instead boots each agent's native server inside the sandbox (Codex app-server over JSON-RPC, OpenCode serve over HTTP/SSE, Claude Code's SDK WebSocket transport) and drives it from the host, behaving like an interactive…
Apr 2026 · github.com
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There's been some interesting work lately with BrowserAI (runs LLMs in the browser using WebGPU) enabling local, private AI processing. Now, the team has released BrowserAgent - a no-code tool built on top of it. BrowserAgent lets you create custom AI workflows using a drag-and-drop interface, all within your browser. This means personalized web summarizers, research assistants, or content generators can all run locally with no cloud costs and full data privacy. Check it out here - https://browseragent.dev Key features include: - No-Code Workflow Builder: Design custom AI agents…
2025 · browseragent.dev
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Hey HN, wanted to share this cli and skill I built @ Steel (I'm the founder) I was trying to set up openclaw on railway and quickly bumped up against issues with a lack of browser access, a core component of the system. Agents like OpenClaw and CC are super good at using browsers but, similar to code sandboxes, they should be able to control these browser in the background, in parallel, without getting blocked by captchas. So I reworked agent-browser, the most popular cli for browser agents, to navigate Steel cloud browser sessions to they can run at scale and unhindered. It's a relatively…
Mar 2026 · twitter.com
- 24IM
I've been running Pi using SmolVM to build SmolVM! SmolVM provides an abstraction over microVMs to easily create sandboxes for coding agents, OpenClaw, or just to build a custom harness. To use it, install using: curl -sSL https://celesto.ai/install.sh | bash and then run: smolvm pi start
May 2026 · github.com
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