Run your AI assistant in a local secure container
· 3 min read
Why shall you run your coding assistant in a container
Coding assistants have stopped being autocomplete: they now install packages, edit files and run shell commands, all with your credentials on your machine.
An agent can wipe your home directory, exfiltrate secrets, fall for prompt injection, run malicious skills, and act on irreversible operations without asking[^docker]. One may use Docker sandboxes (sbx) to run them in an isolated environment so they can work unattended. This article describes a lightweight, dependency-free alternative using only systemd, similar to the [build container][/blog/build-in-nspawn] presented earlier.