amazing-sandbox by ashishb
Shares rank 8 of 12 cloud sandboxes by recommenders
Developers run third-party code and AI agents inside it to limit damage from malicious packages; the main caveat is that it requires Docker, which uses large images and disk space.
Developers run third-party code and AI agents inside it to limit damage from malicious packages; the main caveat is that it requires Docker, which uses large images and disk space.
13 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 5
- approval share
- 62%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Used daily for CLI tools and npm
“All executions (especially of random third-party code) inside the containers are not inconvenient at all for me.”
Comment from 29 Mar 2026 in “Telnyx v4.87.1 and v4.87.2 are compromised by TeamPCP” “have been running LLMs as well as simple tools like linters and even npm inside it for months now”
Comment from 28 May 2026 in “Show HN: Continue? Y/N: A 60-second game about AI agent permission fatigue” “All third-party code runs in isolated containers: node/npm, python/pip.”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “NPM's release cooldown is security theater” - Comment from 25 Mar 2026 in “LiteLLM Python package compromised by supply-chain attack”
- Comment from 12 Jul 2026 in “What xAI's Grok Build CLI Actually Sends to xAI”
- Comment from 13 May 2026 in “TanStack NPM Packages Compromised”
Limits damage from malicious packages
“So, it drastically reduces the attack surface of running third-party Python/Go/Rust/Haskell/JS code on your machine.”
Comment from 25 Mar 2026 in “Tell HN: Litellm 1.82.7 and 1.82.8 on PyPI are compromised” “I wrote amazing-sandbox[1] for myself after seeing how prolific these attack vectors have become in recent years.”
Comment from 6 Mar 2026 in “A GitHub Issue Title Compromised 4k Developer Machines” “Using a proper sandboxing regularly will drastically limit the blast radius of these attacks.”
Comment from 9 Jun 2026 in “Microsoft's open source tools were hacked to steal passwords of AI developers” - Comment from 1 Jun 2026 in “NPM packages from RedHat have been compromised”
- Comment from 5 Jan 2026 in “Sandboxing Untrusted Python”
- Comment from 30 Oct 2026 in “Backdoor in Claude Code for VS Code extension on the Cursor Marketplace”
Keeps AI agents to one directory
“I prefer running such bots inside a sandbox to reduce likelihood of such incidents”
Comment from 30 Jan 2026 in “ClawdBot Skills ganked all my crypto” “Now, I run agents inside it for keeping my non-working-directory files safe.”
Comment from 13 Jan 2026 in “A deep dive on agent sandboxes” “Sandbox it explicitly to give access to only the current directory”
Comment from 20 Jul 2026 in “Kimi Work” - Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “Grok uploaded my user directory to xAI's servers”
- Comment from 2 Oct 2026 in “Updates to Full Disk Access in macOS”
Works on Mac and with VS Code
“so that it works on Mac OS as well and can be used for other tools”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “Sandboxing AI Agents in Linux” “That looks really nice, including the VSCode/Mac wrapper.”
Comment from 30 Oct 2026 in “Backdoor in Claude Code for VS Code extension on the Cursor Marketplace”
Other cloud sandboxes people recommend
The four most recommended other cloud sandboxes, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sprites | 58 | 30 | 66% | 11 | 3 mo4 owners | — |
| E2B | 23 | 4 | 85% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Deno Sandbox | 21 | 9 | 70% | 4 | — | Approved |
| Freestyle Sandboxes | 20 | 8 | 71% | 2 | — | — |
| amazing-sandbox by ashishbThis page | 8 | 5 | 62% | 9 | — | — |
What people said
32 of the 41 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“That looks really nice, including the VSCode/Mac wrapper.”
“it drastically limits the attack radius”
“I even end up writing my own for this purpose”
“It seems easier to use than asb.”
“I run all dev tools including coding agents inside sandbox now”
“All third-party code runs in isolated containers: node/npm, python/pip.”
“One should sandbox all npm command executions.”
“Sandbox it explicitly to give access to only the current directory”
“I intentionally restrict these AI agents to exactly one directory”
“There is a reason I run all such CLIs inside a sandbox”
“Run everything inside isolated sandboxes is the only way out.”
“unless you run it in a sandbox”
“Using a proper sandboxing regularly will drastically limit the blast radius of these attacks.”
“Any sandbox is better than no sandbox.”
“Always run all npm commands inside a sandbox to limit the blast radius.”
“have been running LLMs as well as simple tools like linters and even npm inside it for months now”
“but requires Docker which loads huge images and wastes disk space.”
“I use it every day for CLI tools”
“the last one, I wrote for myself after trying all others”
“use a sandbox for software development as a defense-in-depth measure”
“All executions (especially of random third-party code) inside the containers are not inconvenient at all for me.”
“Amazing-sandbox does not solve for that.”
“So, it drastically reduces the attack surface of running third-party Python/Go/Rust/Haskell/JS code on your machine.”
“I am happily running all third-party tools inside the Amazing Sandbox”
“I wrote amazing-sandbox[1] for myself after seeing how prolific these attack vectors have become in recent years.”
“so that it works on Mac OS as well and can be used for other tools”
“I prefer running such bots inside a sandbox to reduce likelihood of such incidents”
“Now, I run agents inside it for keeping my non-working-directory files safe.”
“That's why I run it inside a sandbox”
“I feel much better now against such malicious packages.”
“migrated all of it into a single tool for ease of use”
“I run them inside a sandbox”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.