boxkite-client

A Python client for a hosted boxkite control-plane — create sandboxes, run commands, edit files, over HTTP. Not the boxkite package itself (boxkite-sandbox, which embeds SandboxManager against your own Kubernetes cluster) — use this to talk to someone else's running control-plane, hosted or self-hosted, over its API.

Install

pip install boxkite-client
pip install boxkite-client[langchain]  # for create_sandbox_tools

Quickstart

from boxkite_client import BoxkiteClient

client = BoxkiteClient(base_url="https://your-control-plane.example.com", api_key="bxk_live_...")

with client.sandbox(label="demo") as sb:
    result = sb.exec("python3 -c 'print(1 + 1)'")
    print(result["stdout"])  # "2\n"

    sb.file_create("notes.txt", "hello from boxkite-client\n")
    print(sb.view("notes.txt")["content"])
# sandbox is destroyed automatically here, even if an exception was raised above

Also available: AsyncBoxkiteClient (same shapes, async/await), file/directory search (ls/glob/grep), long-running background processes (start_process/get_process_output/stop_process), signed preview URLs for exposing a port, an audit-log feed (get_log/watch), interactive human takeover over a raw WebSocket, desktop (GUI) takeover over the same raw-WebSocket pattern, secret management (create_secret/list_secrets/delete_secret, for use via create_sandbox(secret_names=[...])), and a create_sandbox_tools() LangChain factory. Full reference with examples for all of these: docs/API.md.

Error handling

Every non-2xx response raises BoxkiteApiError (.status_code, .code, .message). A network-level failure raises BoxkiteConnectionError. Both subclass BoxkiteError.

from boxkite_client import BoxkiteApiError

try:
    client.exec(sandbox["id"], "echo hi")
except BoxkiteApiError as exc:
    if exc.code == "concurrent_sandbox_limit_reached":
        ...  # back off, destroy an old session, etc.

Retries

Automatic retry is off by default. Pass a RetryConfig to enable it; RetryConfig() carries sensible defaults (2 retries, exponential backoff with full jitter, Retry-After honored):

from boxkite_client import BoxkiteClient, RetryConfig

client = BoxkiteClient(base_url="...", api_key="...", retry=RetryConfig())

Only idempotent verbs (GET/HEAD/PUT/DELETE/OPTIONS) are retried, and only on a connection failure or a transient status (429, 500, 502, 503, 504) — a non-idempotent POST (create-sandbox/secret/webhook) is never retried, so this can't double-create a resource. AsyncBoxkiteClient takes the same retry= argument and awaits its backoff. Every field of RetryConfig is tunable if the defaults don't fit.

Development

pip install -e ".[dev,langchain]"
pytest tests/

Tests mock the control-plane with httpx.MockTransport — no real deployment needed.

Related tools

Moving an in-progress local Claude Code/Codex CLI/opencode session (full conversation history, not just a diff) into a fresh boxkite sandbox is handled by the separate boxkite-handoff CLI, built on this SDK — see ../docs/handoff-adapters.md and ../handoff-cli/README.md. Not yet published to PyPI.

See the root README for what boxkite is and the full self-hosting story.