The open-source engine for AI app-builder products.
Give every user an isolated cloud dev environment, a built-in coding agent, and a live preview URL — self-hosted, on one machine, in one command.

Think of the apps where you type "build me a todo app" and seconds later a working website appears at its own link — like Lovable, Bolt, v0, or Replit. sandboxed is the open-source backend that makes that possible, running on your own server.

Here's what it does, in plain terms. You send it one HTTP request, and it:

1. Creates a sandbox — a private, isolated Linux container (its own filesystem, its own memory limits), so one user's code can never see or break another's.
2. Runs an AI coding agent inside it — you give it a prompt, and it writes the code into that sandbox. (The OpenCode and Claude Code CLIs come pre-installed.)
3. Gives the app a live URL — the dev server running inside the sandbox is instantly reachable at a shareable preview link.

POST /sandbox          → a private, isolated container spins up
POST .../tasks         → an AI agent writes an app inside it
http://<id>.preview... → that app is live at its own URL

It's also cheap to run: a sandbox goes to sleep when nobody's using it (freeing memory) and wakes up the instant someone opens its link again — files are saved on disk the whole time. So one ordinary server can hold many users instead of needing one virtual machine each.

Under the hood it's deliberately small and easy to understand: one Go program that tells Docker what to do, with Traefik handling the URLs and SQLite as the database. No Kubernetes, no separate database server, no message queue — you could read the whole thing in an afternoon.

            ┌──────────────── your host (just needs Docker) ────────────────┐
 browser ──▶│  Traefik  ──▶  sandbox  (coding agent + dev server :3000)      │
            │     ▲              ▲   ▲                                        │
 API/CLI ──▶│  sandboxd ─────────┘   └─ workspace dir (persists)             │
            │     │  SQLite (source of truth) · idle→stop · request→wake      │
            └─────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────────────-─┘

If you're building an AI app-builder, an agent platform, a coding playground, or a per-user preview product, the hard part isn't the prompt — it's the infrastructure underneath it:

• Multi-tenant isolation so one user's code can't touch another's.
• Per-user preview URLs with automatic routing and TLS.
• Cost control — idle environments must release memory, or your bill explodes.
• Agent orchestration — run a coding agent against a workspace, stream its progress, capture the result.
• Persistence, wake-on-demand, reconciliation after a crash or reboot.

That's months of platform work. sandboxed is that platform, distilled to one command:

• ⚡ One-command install. ./install.sh and you have a working API + previews.
• 🧠 Agents included. The OpenCode and Claude Code CLIs ship in every sandbox; hand a sandbox a prompt and it builds.
• 💸 Dense by design. Stop-on-idle + wake-on-request means dozens of sandboxes share one box instead of one VM each — the difference between a $20 server and a $2,000 cluster.
• 🔓 Yours. Self-hosted, MIT-licensed, no vendor lock-in. Own your data, your margins, and your roadmap.
• 🪶 Boring on purpose. SQLite + the docker CLI + Traefik. A reconciler converges Docker back to the database on every boot. You can read the whole control plane in an afternoon.

Requirements: Docker Engine + the Compose plugin, on Linux. That's it.

git clone https://github.com/tastyeffectco/sandboxes.git
cd sandboxes
./install.sh

install.sh checks Docker, writes a .env, builds the sandbox base image + the control plane, and starts the stack. The API is then live at http://127.0.0.1:9090 (verify: curl http://127.0.0.1:9090/healthz → ok).

The base image already includes the OpenCode and Claude Code CLIs. Hand a sandbox a prompt and watch it build (OpenCode runs on its free plan out of the box; pass your own provider key via env to use your account):

API=http://127.0.0.1:9090

# create a sandbox that will serve on port 3000
ID=$(curl -s -XPOST $API/sandbox -H 'content-type: application/json' \
       -d '{"ports":[3000]}' | sed -E 's/.*"id":"([^"]+)".*/\1/')
echo "sandbox: $ID"

# spin a coding agent with a request — it works in ~/workspace/app
curl -s -XPOST $API/v1/sandboxes/$ID/tasks -H 'content-type: application/json' -d '{
        "prompt":"create a Vite app that shows a todo list and run it on port 3000",
        "agent":"opencode"
     }'
# -> {"id":"<taskId>","status":"running","events_url":"/v1/sandboxes/<id>/tasks/<taskId>/events"}

# stream the agent's progress (Server-Sent Events)
curl -N $API/v1/sandboxes/$ID/tasks/<taskId>/events

To use your own model account instead of the free plan, inject a key at create time — it's available to the agent and any shell in the sandbox:

curl -s -XPOST $API/sandbox -d '{"ports":[3000],"env":{"ANTHROPIC_API_KEY":"sk-ant-..."}}'

Once the app serves on port 3000, it's reachable at its preview URL — the sandbox self-registered the route, nothing else to wire:

http://s-<id>-3000.preview.localhost

*.localhost resolves to 127.0.0.1 in every modern browser, so it works locally with zero DNS and zero certificates (add :$HTTP_PORT if you changed it from 80). The first request to a stopped sandbox wakes it automatically. On a real domain you get https://s-<id>-3000.preview.yourdomain.com (see Production / TLS).

Just want a shell, no agent? Skip step 2 and run anything via the exec API: curl -XPOST $API/sandbox/$ID/exec -d '{"cmd":["bash","-lc","cd ~/workspace/app && python3 -m http.server 3000"]}' then open the same preview URL.

Base URL = http://127.0.0.1:9090 (set by SANDBOXED_API_BIND). Auth is off by default for local use; with SANDBOXD_API_AUTH_DISABLED=false + SANDBOXD_API_TOKENS, send -H "Authorization: Bearer <secret>".

A complete, copy-pasteable runbook (including driving it from your own agent) is in AGENTS.md.

The control plane runs in a container with the host Docker socket mounted and launches each sandbox as a sibling container on a shared network so Traefik can route to it. Full design: ARCHITECTURE.md.

Everything is in .env (created from .env.example on install). The defaults run a complete local stack. The knobs you'll touch most:

For a public deployment on a real wildcard domain:

1. Point *.preview.yourdomain.com at the host.
2. In traefik/traefik.yml, enable the websecure entrypoint and add a certificate resolver (Let's Encrypt DNS-01 is ideal — one wildcard cert covers every preview host, so you never hit per-host ACME limits).
3. In .env: PREVIEW_DOMAIN=yourdomain.com, PREVIEW_ENTRYPOINT=websecure, PREVIEW_TLS=true, and enable auth — SANDBOXD_API_AUTH_DISABLED=false with SANDBOXD_API_TOKENS=name:secret.
4. docker compose up -d.

./uninstall.sh            # stop the stack + remove all sandboxes + network (keeps your data)
./uninstall.sh --images   # also remove the built Docker images
./uninstall.sh --data     # also DELETE all workspaces + state (asks to confirm)
./uninstall.sh --all      # full removal: images + data

Safe by default — it removes only what sandboxed created (containers labelled sandboxed.managed=true, the compose stack, the network) and keeps your workspaces unless you pass --data/--all.

Yes — that's exactly the point. If you want to ship an AI app-builder or agent SaaS without first spending months building multi-tenant isolation, preview routing, idle/wake cost control, and agent orchestration, sandboxed gives you that core on day one, on a single inexpensive server, with margins you control. It's a strong, honest starting point — beta-quality, MIT-licensed, and built to be read and extended. Launch lean on it; harden as you grow (next section).

sandboxed v1 is tuned for "works anywhere with just Docker, in one command." To keep it that simple, a few things were left basic on purpose. None of them affect the core loop (create → build → preview → sleep → wake → persist) — they're the knobs to tighten once you have real users and real money on the line. Plain version:

The short version for a fast-scaling company: the three that matter most are (1) stronger isolation (VM-per-tenant) if you ever run untrusted code, (2) turn on API auth and lock down the host, and (3) plan for more than one machine. Everything else above is a config change, not a rewrite. Start lean, revisit these as you grow — and PRs are very welcome (CONTRIBUTING.md).

MIT. Use it, ship it, sell what you build on it.