Sandboxes Aren't Optional: 4 Ways to Isolate Coding Agents — Robert Brennan, OpenHands

This post details four distinct approaches to sandboxing coding agents to mitigate security risks associated with local execution: 1. Local Docker containers, offering good isolation but limited scale and persistence. 2. Cloud-based CI/CD (GitHub Actions), providing better isolation and scale but with potential latency and trigger limitations. 3. Dedicated VMs or Mac Minis, offering strong isolation and persistence but at a higher cost and management overhead. 4. Kubernetes pods per session, providing robust isolation and scalability but with increased complexity. The post emphasizes the principle of least privilege and the limitations of sandboxing, even with these strategies.