From the source
Perplexity is open-sourcing SPACE, the in-house sandbox platform that runs code and files for its Computer agent, so developers can build and inspect safer agent runtimes.
- The company replaced its commercially available sandbox provider with SPACE in July, and says the platform has powered all Computer sessions since, handling millions of sandbox creations per day.
- In a comparison on the same production traffic, Perplexity says sandbox creation was three to five times faster than with the previous provider.
- Each sandbox runs inside a small virtual machine with its own operating system, and a central control plane coordinates when workspaces are created, paused, resumed or removed.
- Perplexity says it treats the sandbox as untrusted and manages network access and platform-held credentials outside it, so agents can reach authorized services without credentials sitting in their working environment.
- Frequent snapshots and checkpoints preserve the full running environment across interruptions, and SPACE stores changes rather than copying entire environments to make creating, restoring or branching a sandbox cheaper.
- A published security evaluation found no escape from the virtual machine to the host in 108 attempts, though some attempts got around network restrictions; Perplexity says it fixed those weaknesses and neither method worked in follow-up testing.
- The company also disclosed related weaknesses found in other sandbox platforms to their vendors, and lists SPACE alongside earlier open-source security tools BrowseSafe, Numbat and Bumblebee.