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How to run a coding agent inside a restricted Box sandbox with Box

Start an agent in a Box sandbox whose file, program, and network access you set in config.

Who it is forA developer on a Mac with Apple silicon who wants an AI coding agent to work on local files without open access to the machine or network.

The problemAn agent with unrestricted shell and network access can read secrets, change files outside the project, or call hosts you did not intend.

The outcomeThe agent runs in an OS sandbox with direct grants set in Box.toml and checked operations decided by policy.dw.

What you need first

  • A Mac with Apple silicon running macOS 15 or later
  • Node.js 22.21 or later from Homebrew, if you follow the getting-started guide
  • Access to Claude Opus 5 on Amazon Bedrock in us-west-2, if you follow the getting-started guide
  • A Rust toolchain via rustup, only if you build from source

Steps

  1. Confirm you have a Mac with Apple silicon and macOS 15 or later.
  2. Run curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/strands-agents/box/main/download.sh | sh
  3. Run ./box-core/box --version to confirm the binaries unpacked into ./box-core.
  4. Edit Box.toml to set the agent command and direct file and network grants, and edit policy.dw to set rules for operations Box checks.
  5. Follow the getting-started guide in docs/user/getting-started.md to run the Box.

Prompt for your agent

Using the strands-agents/box repository, download the binaries with its download.sh script, then write a box.toml that gives <agent-name> read access only to <project-folder>. Expected output: `./box-core/box --version` prints a version string and the box starts with the configured grants reported at startup. Verify that the agent cannot read a file outside <project-folder>.

Caveat. Box is in preview and currently runs locally only on macOS with Apple silicon, so Linux users must wait for planned support.

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