I kept asking: why is giving a coding agent internet access so painful?
The answer turned out to be: you don't need a firewall per endpoint. You need a proxy with a brain.
Trollbridge is a local HTTP/HTTPS proxy that sits between your coding agent and the internet. The agent still gets YOLO locally (read files, write code, run builds) but outbound traffic goes through a gate:
- Known destinations auto-approve via allow rules
- Differentiate by: hostname, verb (GET vs POST etc), path
- Unfamiliar requests pause in a terminal UI for you to review
- Your decisions become sticky policy, you never review the same endpoint twice
- Optional LLM advisor (point it at your local litellm/vllm/etc, nothing leaves your network)
- Full JSONL audit log with per-request correlation IDs
One curl command:
curl -fsSL https://trollbridge.dev/install.sh | sh trollbridge quickstart
Set HTTPS_PROXY and forget it. The troll guards the bridge — your agent stays free locally, but nothing weird crosses.
GitHub: https://github.com/dandriscoll/trollbridge
Quick notes before you ask:
- Not a sandbox. I pair it with Incus for local isolation. Trollbridge just gates the network, which is the part that was actually painful.
- Not mitmproxy. The rule engine, sticky policy, LLM advisor, and approval TUI are what differentiate it. Plus no Python deployment story.
- LLM is optional and local. Advisor is off by default. When you turn it on, point it at your own model.
Applicable if you're running Claude Code, Github Copilot, Codex, Gemini CLI, or similar agents in containers, VMs, WSL, etc.
Show HN: Trollbridge – let your agent run YOLO but without the whole internet
trollbridge.dev