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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

#151

Post by bouke »

e1g wrote: post #7

Creator here - didn't expect this to go public so soon. A few notes: 1. I built this because I like my agents to be local. Not in a container, not in a remote server, but running on my finely-tuned machine. This helps me run all agents on full-auto, in peace. 2. Yes, it's just a policy-generator for sandbox-exec. IMO, that's the best part about the project - no dependencies, no fancy tech, no virtualization. But I di…

I've read through the agent investigation of Codex on macOS. It looks like the default sandbox is pretty limited, however it doesn't match my experience:

- I asked the agent to change my global git username, Codex asked my permission to execute `git config --global user.name "Botje"` and after I granted permission, it was able to change this global configuration.

- I asked it to list my home directory and it was able to (this time without Codex asking for permission).

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

#155

Post by aa-jv »

siwatanejo wrote: post #73
e1g wrote: post #7

Creator here - didn't expect this to go public so soon. A few notes: 1. I built this because I like my agents to be local. Not in a container, not in a remote server, but running on my finely-tuned machine. This helps me run all agents on full-auto, in peace. 2. Yes, it's just a policy-generator for sandbox-exec. IMO, that's the best part about the project - no dependencies, no fancy tech, no virtualization. But I di…

It's kinda funny that I, being skeptical about coding agents and their potential dangers, was interested to give your project a go because I don't trust AI. Yet the first thing I find in your README is that to install your tool I need to trust some random server serve me an .sh file that I will execute in my computer (not sure if with sudo... but still). Come on man, give me a tarball :) EDIT: PS: before someone give…

Do you review every package in your package manager for back doors/trojans - or do you rely on the social circle upstream to do this work for you?

How is this any different than running some random .sh script?

The assumption is that package-manager code is reviewed - that same assumption can be applied just as equitably to wget'ed .sh files.

tl;dr - you are reviewing everything you ever run on your system, right?

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

#156

Post by devrimozcay »

Interesting direction.

One thing we've been seeing with production AI agents is that the real risk isn't just filesystem access, but the chain of actions agents can take once they have tool access.

Even a simple log-reading capability can escalate if the agent starts triggering automated workflows or calling internal APIs.

We've been experimenting with incident-aware agents that detect abnormal behavior and automatically generate incident reports with suggested fixes.

Curious if you're thinking about integrating behavioral monitoring or anomaly detection on top of the sandbox layer.

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

#157

Post by quietsegfault »

scosman wrote: post #128
quietsegfault wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like mostly apple services such as iMessage? I’m asking honestly, not snarky! I don’t think performance is a big factor for agentic hyjinx.

Apple APIs yes. But there’s also an overhead when running containers like docker on Mac (and windows). Only Linux has near-zero overhead.

Right, because on Mac (and windows) you’re running a VM rather than just setting up kernel namespaces. How cpu and network intensive are these pets? Or is it more of a principle thing, which I totally understand?

I prefer containerization because it gives me a repeatable environment that I know works, where on my system things can change as the os updates and applications evolve.

But I can understand the benefit of sandboxing for sure! Thank you.

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