Code Execution (CSB SDK)

Learn how to use the CodeSandbox SDK to execute code, process data, and more.

The CodeSandbox SDK enables you to programmatically spin up development environments and run untrusted code. It provides a programmatic API to create and run sandboxes quickly and securely.

Use Cases

The main use cases for the SDK are:

• Agentic workflows: Build coding agents that can run code to make decisions by calling APIs, processing data & performing calculations
• Data analysis & viz: Analyze datasets to provide on-the-fly analysis and visualizations like charts and graphs
• Cloud code environments: Spin up personalized VM sandboxes that can render a code editor in the browser for each user
• Dynamic file processing: Automate the handling and processing of user-uploaded files, such as converting formats or extracting data

Getting Started

The CodeSandbox SDK is only available on TypeScript for now, Python support is coming!

To get started, install the SDK:

npm install @codesandbox/sdk

Then, create an API token by going to https://codesandbox.io/t/api, and clicking on the “Create API Token” button. You can then use this token to authenticate with the SDK:

TypeScript

import { CodeSandbox } from "@codesandbox/sdk";

// Create the client with your token
const sdk = new CodeSandbox(token);

// This creates a new sandbox by forking our default template sandbox.
// You can also pass in other template ids, or create your own template to fork from.
const sandbox = await sdk.sandbox.create();

// You can run JS code directly
await sandbox.shells.js.run("console.log(1+1)");
// Or Python code (if it's installed in the template)
await sandbox.shells.python.run("print(1+1)");

// Or anything else
await sandbox.shells.run("echo 'Hello, world!'");

// We have a FS API to interact with the filesystem
await sandbox.fs.writeTextFile("./hello.txt", "world");

// And you can clone sandboxes! This does not only clone the filesystem, processes that are running in the original sandbox will also be cloned!
const sandbox2 = await sandbox.fork();

// Check that the file is still there
await sandbox2.fs.readTextFile("./hello.txt");

// You can also get the opened ports, with the URL to access those
console.log(sandbox2.ports.getOpenedPorts());

// Getting metrics...
const metrics = await sandbox2.getMetrics();
console.log(
  `Memory: ${metrics.memory.usedKiB} KiB / ${metrics.memory.totalKiB} KiB`
);
console.log(`CPU: ${(metrics.cpu.used / metrics.cpu.cores) * 100}%`);

// Finally, you can hibernate a sandbox. This will snapshot the sandbox and stop it. Next time you start the sandbox, it will continue where it left off, as we created a memory snapshot.
await sandbox.hibernate();
await sandbox2.hibernate();

// Open the sandbox again
const resumedSandbox = await sdk.sandbox.open(sandbox.id);

CodeSandbox Integration

This SDK uses the API token from your workspace in CodeSandbox to authenticate and create sandboxes. Because of this, the sandboxes will be created inside your workspace, and the resources will be billed to your workspace.

You could, for example, create a private template in your workspace that has all the dependencies you need (even running servers), and then use that template to fork sandboxes from. This way, you can control the environment that the sandboxes run in.

Features

Under the hood, the SDK uses the microVM infrastructure of CodeSandbox to spin up sandboxes. It supports:

• Starting fresh VMs within 4 seconds
• Snapshotting/restoring VMs (checkpointing) at any point in time
• With snapshot restore times of less than 2 seconds
• Cloning VMs within 3 seconds
• Source control (git, GitHub, CodeSandbox SCM)
• Running any Dockerfile