About Microsandbox
Microsandbox runs untrusted code inside small virtual machines on your own machine. Typical workloads include AI agents, code submitted by users, plugins, CI jobs, development environments, scrapers and other automation, and each runs behind hardware-level isolation rather than just a container boundary.
Sandboxes can be forked while running and snapshotted so their state is saved and restored later. It runs ordinary OCI container images pulled from Docker Hub, GHCR or another OCI registry, with Docker-like workflows for images, commands, shells and volumes, and runs on Linux with KVM, macOS on Apple Silicon and Windows with WHP. It can be embedded: SDKs for TypeScript, Python, Go and Rust let code spawn VMs directly with no setup server or long-running daemon. Secret keys are designed never to enter the VM, and agents can create their own sandboxes through Agent Skills and an MCP server.
The msb command-line tool manages sandboxes, snapshots, images and volumes. The project is licensed under Apache-2.0, written in Rust, and the authors state it is still beta software, so breaking changes and rough edges should be expected.
Key features
- Hardware-isolated microVM sandboxes
- Fork and snapshot running sandboxes
- OCI image compatibility
- Embeddable SDKs without a daemon
- Secrets kept outside the VM
- Agent Skills and MCP server
- Linux, macOS and Windows support
Good fit for
- →Running AI-generated code safely
- →Isolated CI jobs and dev environments
- →Sandboxing plugins and scrapers
- Tags
- sandbox
- microvm
- security
- ai-agents
- virtualization
- oci
- rust
- local-first
- isolation
Microsandbox: questions and answers
- What is Microsandbox used for?
- Microsandbox is a local-first microVM runtime that runs untrusted workloads such as AI agent code in fast, hardware-isolated sandboxes, with a CLI and SDKs. It is a good fit for running AI-generated code safely, isolated CI jobs and dev environments, and sandboxing plugins and scrapers.
- Is Microsandbox open source?
- Yes. Microsandbox is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at superradcompany/microsandbox and is written mainly in Rust.
- Is Microsandbox free?
- Yes. Microsandbox is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
- Can I self-host Microsandbox?
- Yes. Microsandbox can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.
- What are some alternatives to Microsandbox?
- Similar open-source tools in the AI Infrastructure category include Open Managed Agents, Dify and Langflow. SaaS products in the same category include AgentGov, Amazon Bedrock and Audn Corporation.
- Is Microsandbox actively maintained?
- Yes. The most recent commit to Microsandbox was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v0.7.6, published on 1 October 2026. The project has 8.5k stars on GitHub.
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