Posted by emilburzo 1/20/2026
The only access the container has are the folders that are bind mounted from the host’s filesystem. The container gets network access from a transparent proxy.
https://github.com/dogestreet/dev-container
Much more usable than setting up a VM and you can share the same desktop environment as the host.
I ended up getting a mini-PC solely dedicated toward running agents in dangerous mode, it's refreshing to not have to think too much about sandboxing.
There's a load of ways that a repository owner can get an LLM agent to execute code on user's machines so not a good plan to let them run on your main laptop/desktop.
Personally my approach has been put all my agents in a dedicated VM and then provide them a scratch test server with nothing on it, when they need to do something that requires bare metal.
So I just run agents as the agent user.
I don't need it to have root though. It just installs everything locally.
If I did need root I'd probably just buy a used NUC for $100, and let Claude have the whole box.
I did something similar by just renting a $3 VPS, and getting Claude root there. It sounds bad but I couldn't see any downside. If it blows it up, I can just reset it. And it's really nice having "my own sysadmin." :)
Claude gets all the packages it needs through Guix.
I currently apply the same strategy we use in case of the senior developer or CTO going off the deep end. Snapshots of VMs, PITR for databases and file shares, locked down master branches, etc.
I wouldn't spend a bunch of energy inventing an entirely new kind of prison for these agents. I would focus on the same mitigation strategies that could address a malicious human developer. Virtual box on a sensitive host another human is using is not how you'd go about it. Giving the developer a cheap cloud VM or physical host they can completely own is more typical. Locking down at the network is one of the simplest and most effective methods.
I needed a way to run Claude marketplace agents via Discord. Problem: agents can execute code, hit APIs, touch the filesystem—the dangerous stuff. Can't do that in a Worker's 30s timeout.
Solution: Worker handles Discord protocol (signature verification, deferred response) and queues the task. Cloudflare Sandbox picks it up with a 15min timeout and runs claude --agent plugin:agent in an isolated container. Discord threads store history, so everything stays stateless. Hono for routing.
This was surprisingly little glue. And the Cloudflare MCP made it a breeze do debug (instead of headbanging against the dashboard). Still working on getting E2E latency down.
Threat model for me is more "whoops it deleted my home directory" rather than some elaborate malicious exploit.
pct exec $CTID -- sh -c "mkdir test"
I've got a script that makes an arch lxc and turns it into a template.
And then bash scripts that deploys it with whatever custom stuff is needed (volume mounts, podman, files pushed into container etc).
Also a pacoloco server (arch/pacman cache) so that all the building and updating for everything is fast & not hitting the upstreams unnecessarily.
Terraform or Ansible also works for this but decided bash is ultimately less moving parts
> So in that sense it seems that AI is actually more aligned with my goals than a potential employee.
It may seem like that but I recommend you reading up on different kinda of misalignment in AI safety.
(GPT recently changed its attitude on this subject too which is very interesting.)
The most interesting part is that you will be given the option to downgrade the conversation to an older model. Implying that there was a step change in capability on this front in recent months.
I'm working on targeting both the curl|bash pattern and coding agents with this (via smart out of the box profiles). Early stages but functional. Feedback and bug reports would be appreciated.