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Agent Safehouse – macOS-native sandboxing for local agents

agent-safehouse.dev

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Re: Agent Safehouse – macOS-native sandboxing for local agents

#61

Post by simonw »

The challenge I'm finding with sandboxes like this is evaluating them in comparison to each other.

This looks like a competent wrapper around sandbox-exec. I've seen a whole lot of similar wrappers emerging over the past few months.

What I really need is help figuring out which ones are trustworthy.

I think this needs to take the form of documentation combined with clearly explained and readable automated tests.

Most sandboxes - including sandbox-exec itself - are massively under-documented.

I am going to trust them I need both detailed documentation and proof that they work as advertised.

Re: Agent Safehouse – macOS-native sandboxing for local agents

#62

Post by e1g »

simonw wrote: post #61

The challenge I'm finding with sandboxes like this is evaluating them in comparison to each other. This looks like a competent wrapper around sandbox-exec. I've seen a whole lot of similar wrappers emerging over the past few months. What I really need is help figuring out which ones are trustworthy. I think this needs to take the form of documentation combined with clearly explained and readable automated tests. Most…

Thank you for your work - I have sent many of your links to my people.

Your point is totally fair for evaluating security tooling. A few notes -

1. I implemented this in Bash to avoid having an opaque binary in the way.

2. All sandbox-exec profiles are split up into individual files by specific agent/integration, and are easily auditable (https://github.com/eugene1g/agent-safehouse/tree/main/profil...)

3. There are E2E tests validating sandboxing behavior under real agents

4. You don't even need the Safehouse Bash wrapper, and can use the Policy Builder to generate a static policy file with minimal permissions that you can feed to sandbox-exec directly (https://agent-safehouse.dev/policy-builder). Or feed the repo to your LLMs and have them write your own policy from the many examples.

5. This whole repo should be a StrongDM-style readme to copy&paste to your clanker. I might just do that "refactor", but for now added LLM instructions to create your own sandbox-exec profiles https://agent-safehouse.dev/llm-instructions.txt

Re: Agent Safehouse – macOS-native sandboxing for local agents

#63

Post by e1g »

asabla wrote: post #37
e1g wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pure TUI is solid - I’ve been running all my pets inside that cage for several weeks with no issues. Auto-updates work, session renewals work, config updates work etc. But lately I’ve been using agents to test via browsers, and starting headless browsers from the agent is flakey. I’m working on that but it’s hard to find a secure default to run Chrome. In the repo, I have policies for running the Claude desktop app a…

Yee I gotcha. Did a migration myself last week from using playwright mcp towards playwright-cli instead. Which has been playing much nicer so far. I guess you would run into the same issues you've already mentioned about running chrome headless in one of these sandboxes. I'll for sure keep an eye out for updates. Kudos to the project!

playwright-cli works out of the box, and I just merged support for agent-browser. If you end up testing out Safehouse, and have any issues, just create an issue on GitHub, and I'll check it out. Browser usage is definitely among my use cases.

Re: Agent Safehouse – macOS-native sandboxing for local agents

#64

Post by matifali »

I wonder why you believe that running agents locally is the best approach. For most people, having agents operate remotely is more effective because the agent can stay active without your local machine needing to remain powered on and connected to the internet 24/7.

Re: Agent Safehouse – macOS-native sandboxing for local agents

#65

Post by NegativeLatency »

matifali wrote: post #64

I wonder why you believe that running agents locally is the best approach. For most people, having agents operate remotely is more effective because the agent can stay active without your local machine needing to remain powered on and connected to the internet 24/7.

It’s nice having control and ownership of your software.

I’m assuming it’s similar to why people run plex, web servers, file sharing, etc

Also personally I’d rather not pay monthly fees for stuff if it can be avoided.

Re: Agent Safehouse – macOS-native sandboxing for local agents

#67

Post by deevus »

matifali wrote: post #64

I wonder why you believe that running agents locally is the best approach. For most people, having agents operate remotely is more effective because the agent can stay active without your local machine needing to remain powered on and connected to the internet 24/7.

For this specific problem I built pixels: https://github.com/deevus/pixels

It supports running on a TrueNAS SCALE server, or via Incus (local or remote). I'm still working on tightening the security posture, but for many types of AI workflows it will be more than sufficient.

Re: Agent Safehouse – macOS-native sandboxing for local agents

#69

Post by mikodin »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #65
matifali wrote: post #64

I wonder why you believe that running agents locally is the best approach. For most people, having agents operate remotely is more effective because the agent can stay active without your local machine needing to remain powered on and connected to the internet 24/7.

It’s nice having control and ownership of your software. I’m assuming it’s similar to why people run plex, web servers, file sharing, etc Also personally I’d rather not pay monthly fees for stuff if it can be avoided.

Piggybacking on this - I think it well equips us for a future when local models are stronger. I for one am grateful for efforts like these
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