cua-sandbox

Sandboxed VM environments with a unified Python API. Cloud by default.

pip install cua-sandbox

Fleet support is provided by the published cua-fleet wheel. It bundles the platform-specific fleet_sdk native binding. Install from the Cua wheel index when resolving dependencies with pip:

pip install --extra-index-url https://wheels.cua.ai/simple cua-sandbox

Ephemeral sandbox

Created on enter, destroyed on exit.

from cua_sandbox import Sandbox, Image

async with Sandbox.ephemeral(Image.linux()) as sb:
    await sb.shell.run("uname -a")
    await sb.screenshot()

Persistent sandbox

Provision a new sandbox that stays alive after your script exits.

from cua_sandbox import Sandbox, Image

sb = await Sandbox.create(Image.linux())
await sb.shell.run("uname -a")
print(sb.name)  # save this to reconnect later
await sb.disconnect()

Connect to existing sandbox

Attach to a sandbox that's already running. Works as a plain await or context manager.

from cua_sandbox import Sandbox

# plain await
sb = await Sandbox.connect("my-sandbox")
await sb.shell.run("whoami")
await sb.disconnect()

# context manager — disconnects on exit, sandbox keeps running
async with Sandbox.connect("my-sandbox") as sb:
    await sb.shell.run("whoami")

Destroy a sandbox

await sb.destroy()  # disconnect + permanently delete

Local VM

Spins up a local VM using QEMU or Lume, destroyed on exit.

from cua_sandbox import Sandbox, Image
from cua_sandbox.runtime import QEMURuntime

async with Sandbox.ephemeral(Image.linux(), local=True, runtime=QEMURuntime()) as sb:
    await sb.shell.run("uname -a")

Localhost (unsandboxed)

Direct host control — not sandboxed, use with caution.

from cua_sandbox import Localhost

async with Localhost.connect() as host:
    await host.shell.run("echo hello")
    await host.screenshot()

Cloud sandbox

Fleet is the OAuth cloud backend. Configure OAuth credentials once; Fleet uses https://run.cua.ai by default and can be overridden with configure(fleet_base_url=...) or CUA_FLEET_BASE_URL. The legacy API-key VM API continues to use https://api.cua.ai. Cloud images must use a registry reference; expose() declares additional Fleet services.

Fleet does not support snapshots or custom disks, and currently supports only us-east-1. await sb.tunnel.forward(3000) returns the authenticated Fleet service URL for an exposed port; it does not open a local SSH tunnel.

Fleet pools

Use a pool to keep reusable registry-image sandboxes warm. Reconciliation is idempotent: it creates a missing pool or updates the existing pool with the same name. Each claim is released when the context exits, including when the block raises.

from cua_sandbox import Image, Pool

pool = await Pool.reconcile({
    "name": "foo",
    "image": Image.from_registry("registry.example/workspace:latest"),
})

async with pool.claim() as sb:
    result = await sb.shell.run("echo hello")

    # Requests use the same authenticated Fleet claim.
    response = await sb.services.request(
        "mcp", method="POST", path="/mcp", json={"jsonrpc": "2.0", "method": "tools/list", "id": 1}
    )
    response.raise_for_status()

For scripts that use the synchronous facade:

from cua_sandbox import Image
from cua_sandbox.sync import Pool

pool = Pool.reconcile({"name": "foo", "image": Image.from_registry("example:latest")})
with pool.claim() as sb:
    result = sb.shell.run("echo hello")

import os

import cua_sandbox as cua
from cua_sandbox import Image, Sandbox

cua.configure(
    client_id=os.environ["CUA_CLIENT_ID"],
    client_secret=os.environ["CUA_CLIENT_SECRET"],
)

async with Sandbox.ephemeral(
    Image.from_registry("registry.example/desktop-workspace@sha256:...").expose(3000)
) as sb:
    await sb.shell.run("uname -a")