Agent sandbox glossary
The terms behind agent sandboxes, each answered in one line and then explained.
60 pages
- GiB vs GB: what is the difference?A GiB (gibibyte) is 1,073,741,824 bytes, which is 2 to the 30th power.
- Shared vs reserved CPU: what is the difference?Shared CPU guarantees a machine a small slice of a core, and lets it burst.
- What are cgroups?Control groups (cgroups) are a Linux kernel feature that groups processes so their resource use can be limited and measured.
- What are egress fees?Egress fees are what a cloud charges for data that leaves its network.
- What are least-privilege API keys?A least-privilege API key can do only what its job needs.
- What are Linux namespaces?Linux namespaces give a group of processes a private view of a kernel resource.
- What is a bare-metal server?A bare-metal server is a physical machine rented whole, with no provider hypervisor between your software and the hardware.
- What is a code execution tool?A code execution tool is a tool an LLM calls to run the code it writes, returning the output so the model can use it in its answer.
- What is a code interpreter?A code interpreter lets an AI model run code in a live session that keeps variables between runs and returns charts and tables.
- What is a cold start?A cold start is the wait between asking for a new sandbox, VM or function and the moment it can run your first command.
- What is a container escape?A container escape is when code inside a container breaks its isolation and reaches the host or other containers on the same machine.
- What is a container?A container is a process the Linux kernel isolates with its own filesystem, network and process view, sharing the host's kernel.
- What is a CPU floor?A CPU floor is the share of a processor a machine is guaranteed when it shares cores, and the least CPU it is billed for while idle.
- What is a headless browser?A headless browser is a real web browser that runs without a window.
- What is a hypervisor?A hypervisor is software that runs virtual machines.
- What is a memory snapshot?A memory snapshot saves a running virtual machine's RAM and device state to files.
- What is a microVM?A microVM is a small virtual machine.
- What is a noisy neighbor?A noisy neighbor is another tenant on shared hardware.
- What is a preview URL?A preview URL is a temporary web address for an app that runs in a development or test environment.
- What is a remote development environment?A remote development environment is a machine elsewhere.
- What is a sandbox fork?A sandbox fork is a new sandbox copied from a running sandbox.
- What is a sandbox snapshot?A sandbox snapshot is a saved copy of a sandbox's machine.
- What is a spending limit?A spending limit caps how much a key, a job or a machine can cost.
- What is a vCPU?A vCPU (virtual CPU) is the processor that a virtual machine sees.
- What is a virtual machine monitor (VMM)?A virtual machine monitor (VMM) is the program that creates a VM on a hypervisor, emulates its devices and runs its virtual CPUs.
- What is a warm pool?A warm pool is a set of machines started ahead of demand.
- What is a webhook?A webhook is an HTTP request that a service sends to your URL when something happens.
- What is an agent loop?An agent loop repeats one cycle.
- What is an agent sandbox?An agent sandbox is an isolated computer where an AI agent can run programs, install dependencies and work with files safely.
- What is an API rate limit?An API rate limit caps how many requests a client can make in a period of time.
- What is an egress proxy?An egress proxy is a server that every outbound connection from a machine must pass through.
- What is an ephemeral environment?An ephemeral environment is an isolated copy of a system.
- What is an idempotency key?An idempotency key is a unique string sent with a write.
- What is an MCP server?An MCP server is a program that offers tools, data and prompts to AI applications over the Model Context Protocol.
- What is an uptime SLA?An uptime SLA is a provider's written promise of how much of each month its service will be available.
- What is computer use?Computer use is an AI model operating a desktop the way a person does: it reads screenshots and answers with clicks, key presses and typing.
- What is copy-on-write?Copy-on-write (CoW) lets copies share one set of data until one of them writes; only the part that changes is then copied.
- What is CPU overcommitment?CPU overcommitment is promising more vCPUs to a host's machines than it has cores, betting that they will not all be busy at the same time.
- What is egress control?Egress control decides which outbound network connections a machine may make: none, only named hosts, or everything but a deny list.
- What is Firecracker?Firecracker is an open-source virtual machine monitor from AWS.
- What is gVisor?gVisor is an open-source application kernel from Google, written in Go.
- What is idle pause?Idle pause suspends a sandbox or VM after a set time with no activity.
- What is infrastructure as a service?Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) rents out computing, storage and networks on demand.
- What is KVM?KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is the hypervisor built into Linux.
- What is object storage?Object storage keeps data as whole objects in buckets.
- What is p95 latency?p95 latency is the time within which 95% of requests finish.
- What is per-second billing?Per-second billing charges for cloud resources by the second they run.
- What is prompt injection?Prompt injection is text that makes a language model ignore its instructions.
- What is seccomp?seccomp is a Linux kernel feature.
- What is serverless computing?Serverless computing runs your code with no servers for you to manage.
- What is single sign-on?Single sign-on (SSO) lets people sign in to many applications with one account.
- What is SSH port forwarding?SSH port forwarding sends a TCP connection through an SSH session.
- What is SSH?SSH (Secure Shell) is the protocol for logging in to a remote computer and running commands over an encrypted connection.
- What is SWE-bench?SWE-bench is a benchmark of real GitHub issues.
- What is the Firecracker jailer?The jailer is a program from the Firecracker project.
- What is the Model Context Protocol (MCP)?The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard.
- What is tool calling?Tool calling lets a language model ask your application to run a named function with arguments the model chose.
- What is virtio?virtio is an OASIS standard for virtual devices, such as disks and network cards.
- What is vsock?vsock (AF_VSOCK) is a Linux socket family for communication between a virtual machine and its host.
- What is workload identity?Workload identity lets code prove what it is with a short-lived signed token.