{"slug": "pi-sandbox", "name": "pi-sandbox", "category": "security", "category_name": "Security and passwords", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 4, "warners": 0, "score": 3.045, "rising": 1.35, "first": "2026-04-08", "latest": "2026-08-05", "why": "pi-sandbox is good at allowing me to configure sandbox access", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 1, "compare": 0, "warn": 1}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "pi-sandbox is good at allowing me to configure sandbox access", "kind": "", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/carderne/pi-sandbox", "official_url": "https://github.com/carderne/pi-sandbox", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["pi-sandbox"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 786925922, "item_id": 49182870, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49182870", "by": "newtwilly", "date": "2026-08-05", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "pi-sandbox is good at allowing me to configure sandbox access", "excerpt": "I disagree on plan and todo-list, which seem relatively not needed to me. No comment on goals/looping, which I don't have much experience with. To me it's great how minimal the system prompt and tool set is, and I doubt those features are worth the tokens for every model. (Who knows if they improve performance for SOTA models, and they probably harm performance for small local models.) I would add \"better sandbox\" su", "context": "", "use_case": "sandboxing agent", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage"}, {"id": 786925520, "item_id": 49182845, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49182845", "by": "mark_l_watson", "date": "2026-08-05", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I find pi-sandbox works well for me.", "excerpt": "I find pi-sandbox works well for me. Did you evaluate pi-sandbox? If not, give it a try.", "context": "", "use_case": "Sandboxing a coding agent", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage"}, {"id": 786919794, "item_id": 49182487, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49182487", "by": "mark_l_watson", "date": "2026-08-05", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I add just two extra tools: pi-sandbox and a paid for search service tool.", "excerpt": "I am starting to share the opinion in the article. I used to use Claude Code with strong open models, and sometimes pay for Opus. Now one of my main drivers is out of the box pi\u2019s 4 built in tools, and I add just two extra tools: pi-sandbox and a paid for search service tool. This setup works great with the latest deepseek v4 flash, switching to more powerful open models occasionally. I wrote my own coding harness in", "context": "", "use_case": "sandboxing Pi", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage"}, {"id": 778127440, "item_id": 48632965, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48632965", "by": "newtwilly", "date": "2026-06-22", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Decent sandbox + sandbox override experience with pi coding agent", "excerpt": "Decent sandbox + sandbox override experience with pi coding agent... pi-sandbox uses the same sandbox tech that claude code uses, although it uses a fork that's a little behind, and I'm not sure exactly why it uses a fork. You can install pi, then install pi-sandbox locked to the current version. Here it is described how pi-sandbox plus an additional extension allow you to have the experience where a sandbox is used,", "context": "", "use_case": "sandboxing coding agent", "switched_from": "", "story": "Codex logging bug may write TBs to local SSDs"}, {"id": 763152336, "item_id": 47697021, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47697021", "by": "reegnz", "date": "2026-04-08", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "You can add that via an extension", "excerpt": "You can add that via an extension: https://github.com/carderne/pi-sandbox The price of flexibility is, pi is not opinionated about adding sandboxing out-of-the-box, it gives you options on how you want to do it. You either do it with linux containers, with a dedicated VM, or just bubblewrap. It is nice that it gives you a way to hook into it in a very easy way though.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "I've Sold Out"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 786924145, "item_id": 49182759, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49182759", "by": "newtwilly", "date": "2026-08-05", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "is with using the pi-sandbox extension", "excerpt": "There is a keybindings file. Here's how to configure the \"emacs\" keybindings https://pi.dev/docs/latest/keybindings#emacs-example It starts up for me in under a second on my M4 mac. (Obviously could be faster, but doesn't bother me personally on my hardware) My one main \"issue\" is with using the pi-sandbox extension. It's based on a forked claude code sandbox runtime. Not exactly sure why a fork was needed, and the f", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage"}]}], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["sandboxing agent", "sandboxing a coding agent", "sandboxing pi", "sandboxing coding agent"], "compared": [{"slug": "pi", "name": "Pi", "co": 7, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "claude-code", "name": "Claude Code", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "cursor", "name": "Cursor", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 756898016, "item_id": 47306126, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47306126", "by": "carderne", "date": "2026-03-09", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've built something similar[1] that works on macOS+Linux", "excerpt": "How do agents tend to deal with getting blocked? Messing around with sandboxes, I've quite even seen them get blocked, assume something is wrong, and go _crazy_ trying to get around the block, never stopping to ask for user input. It might be good to add to the error message: \"This is deliberate, don't try to get around it.\" For those using pi, I've built something similar[1] that works on macOS+Linux, using sandbox-", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Agent Safehouse \u2013 macOS-native sandboxing for local agents"}, {"id": 754404257, "item_id": 47150266, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47150266", "by": "carderne", "date": "2026-02-25", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Have a look, copy-paste what you like.", "excerpt": "I got pi to write me a very basic sandbox based on an example from the pi github. Added hooks for read/write/edit/bash, some prompts to temp/perm override. Have a look, copy-paste what you like. https://github.com/carderne/pi-sandbox", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pi \u2013 a minimal terminal coding harness"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49176038", "title": "Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48626930", "title": "Codex logging bug may write TBs to local SSDs", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48507020", "title": "How to Setup a Local Coding Agent on macOS", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47687533", "title": "I've Sold Out", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47301085", "title": "Agent Safehouse \u2013 macOS-native sandboxing for local agents", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47143754", "title": "Pi \u2013 a minimal terminal coding harness", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 1, "warn": 1}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "family_ref": null, "runs_on": null, "lines": [], "quotes": [{"id": 786925922, "item_id": 49182870, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49182870", "by": "newtwilly", "date": "2026-08-05", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "pi-sandbox is good at allowing me to configure sandbox access", "excerpt": "I disagree on plan and todo-list, which seem relatively not needed to me. No comment on goals/looping, which I don't have much experience with. To me it's great how minimal the system prompt and tool set is, and I doubt those features are worth the tokens for every model. (Who knows if they improve performance for SOTA models, and they probably harm performance for small local models.) I would add \"better sandbox\" su", "context": "", "use_case": "sandboxing agent", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage"}, {"id": 786925520, "item_id": 49182845, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49182845", "by": "mark_l_watson", "date": "2026-08-05", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I find pi-sandbox works well for me.", "excerpt": "I find pi-sandbox works well for me. Did you evaluate pi-sandbox? If not, give it a try.", "context": "", "use_case": "Sandboxing a coding agent", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage"}, {"id": 786924145, "item_id": 49182759, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49182759", "by": "newtwilly", "date": "2026-08-05", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "is with using the pi-sandbox extension", "excerpt": "There is a keybindings file. Here's how to configure the \"emacs\" keybindings https://pi.dev/docs/latest/keybindings#emacs-example It starts up for me in under a second on my M4 mac. (Obviously could be faster, but doesn't bother me personally on my hardware) My one main \"issue\" is with using the pi-sandbox extension. It's based on a forked claude code sandbox runtime. Not exactly sure why a fork was needed, and the f", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage"}, {"id": 786919794, "item_id": 49182487, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49182487", "by": "mark_l_watson", "date": "2026-08-05", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I add just two extra tools: pi-sandbox and a paid for search service tool.", "excerpt": "I am starting to share the opinion in the article. I used to use Claude Code with strong open models, and sometimes pay for Opus. Now one of my main drivers is out of the box pi\u2019s 4 built in tools, and I add just two extra tools: pi-sandbox and a paid for search service tool. This setup works great with the latest deepseek v4 flash, switching to more powerful open models occasionally. I wrote my own coding harness in", "context": "", "use_case": "sandboxing Pi", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage"}, {"id": 778127440, "item_id": 48632965, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48632965", "by": "newtwilly", "date": "2026-06-22", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Decent sandbox + sandbox override experience with pi coding agent", "excerpt": "Decent sandbox + sandbox override experience with pi coding agent... pi-sandbox uses the same sandbox tech that claude code uses, although it uses a fork that's a little behind, and I'm not sure exactly why it uses a fork. You can install pi, then install pi-sandbox locked to the current version. Here it is described how pi-sandbox plus an additional extension allow you to have the experience where a sandbox is used,", "context": "", "use_case": "sandboxing coding agent", "switched_from": "", "story": "Codex logging bug may write TBs to local SSDs"}, {"id": 776143216, "item_id": 48508951, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48508951", "by": "Dotnaught", "date": "2026-06-12", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "In case anyone is looking for a sandbox to go with oMLX and Pi", "excerpt": "In case anyone is looking for a sandbox to go with oMLX and Pi: https://github.com/Dotnaught/pi-sandbox", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "How to Setup a Local Coding Agent on macOS"}, {"id": 763152336, "item_id": 47697021, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47697021", "by": "reegnz", "date": "2026-04-08", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "You can add that via an extension", "excerpt": "You can add that via an extension: https://github.com/carderne/pi-sandbox The price of flexibility is, pi is not opinionated about adding sandboxing out-of-the-box, it gives you options on how you want to do it. You either do it with linux containers, with a dedicated VM, or just bubblewrap. It is nice that it gives you a way to hook into it in a very easy way though.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "I've Sold Out"}]}