Show HN: Era – Open-source local sandbox for AI agents

It will be possible to run from a node SDK soonTM!

Here's the work-in-progress here: https://github.com/BinSquare/ERA/tree/main/era-agent/sdk/nod...

I'm not very familiar with node to be fair so it's taking a little longer for me to get that going.

Co-builder on this project,

To answer your questions :)

- How would I use these microVms and what is the cloudflare worker for?

This is unlikely the right solution for you, it's more geared towards people building kilocode (because they have an agent that independently writes code + executes that code).

The microvm's are for developers running locally wanting to execute untrusted code written by an ai - example is running codex or gemini-cli. Cloudflare workers are for users who want their own "sandbox infra" so they can execute untrusted code written by ai with their production app (not local hopefully)!

- I currently run a regular set of docker containers to run my code, how does this compare?

Very little difference for your use case unless you expect to do more hostile coding.

But I'll try to explain why VM's are different than containers in the security area:

Containers are not considered as production-level security boundary. One of the main reason is because containers share the kernel with the host machine running the container.

Security penetration engineers do not consider exploiting `some` linux kernels to be high effort because depending on the version, libraries, etc there are CVE's to exploit: https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog...

However, virtual machines are battle tested sandbox tech designed to have strong protection by having host and the VM have individual operating systems AND dedicated virtualized hardware. This is also the main environment you can rent from big providers. Some more info here: https://www.wiz.io/academy/containers-vs-vms

So this product is a microVM which combines security of VM's + a layer to make it easy and fast like containers to get the best of both worlds.

Will do!

The microvm's are our local solution so devs can use it.

But we thought people might to do some production work to not run local stuff - so we added a compatibility layer with cloudflare :D. Good note, didn't even think about that being kind of confusing.

No CF account needed to run this!

Just poked through the code, and I’ll add to the other answers given from an outsiders perspective.

What I find interesting: I’m running all kinds of agents (for good or bad, make fun of me if you like): not just coding agent products, but “hand rolled” as well, and they all have features which require some filesystem or environment state (tools, skills, instructions etc). They are each subtly different in those requirements, but some patterns are emerging and it seems to me that OP is seeing this as well - and noting that this aligns with the Agent Sandbox domain which is not “solved” yet. Consider that a Dockerfile sets up an environment for the code you want to deploy, which is better than the shell script you use on your local - it’s becoming more apparent to me that there’s a similar need here, which isn’t satisfied by the abstractions we already have, and lots of folks are poking around these domains to find something that fits.

Co-builder of proj here:

You absolutely can spin up a container or a vm and run your agents in it - but you make trade offs. Containers are easy and fast. Vm's use more resources but are more secure. Most people in production run containers in vm's to get benefits of both!

This is a product that tries to get the best parts of both containers (devX + speed) and vm's (security). The innovation here is using micro-vm's which are really really lightweight and fast to start compared to traditional vm's. Props to libkrun team for creating that: https://github.com/containers/libkrun