gbox

gbox is a self-hostable sandbox for AI Agents to execute commands, surf web and use desktop/mobile. See "Features" section for details.

This project is based on the technology behind gru.ai. It has been tested over 100000 Agent jobs.

As MCP is getting more and more popular, we also implemented a MCP server to make it easy to be directly integrated into MCP client such as Claude Desktop/Cursor.

Features

1. Terminal

   • Execute any linux command

   • Execute python scripts directly

   • Share session across invokes [under-development]

2. File

   • Mount host machine folders into sandbox

   • Access sandbox files through http links

   • Read file content in multi-modal

   • Write/re-write files

   • Edit files [under-development]

   • Search files [under-development]

3. Browser

   • Open any url, return content in multi-modal

   • Download from any url [under-development]

   • Operate browser by instructions

   • Human take over [under-development]

4. HTTP Server

   • Start http service on any folder on demand [under-development]

5. SDKs

   • Python SDK: Install using pip install pygbox. See PyPI for details.

   • Typescript SDK

6. MCP

   • Standard MCP support

   • Integrate Claude Desktop & Cursor

Related MCP server: GCP MCP

Use gbox as a SDK

Python SDK

Python SDK Documentation

Typescript SDK

Typescript SDK Documentation

Use gbox as a CLI

Installation

System Requirements

• macOS 10.15 or later

• Docker Desktop for Mac

• Homebrew

Note: Support for other platforms (Linux, Windows) is coming soon.

Installation Steps

Update Steps

Command Line Usage

The project provides a command-line tool gbox for managing sandbox containers:

Volume Mounts

The gbox box create command supports Docker-compatible volume mounts using the -v or --volume flag. This allows you to share files and directories between your host system and the sandbox containers.

The volume mount syntax follows this format:

Where:

• /host/path: Path to a file or directory on your host system

• /container/path: Path where the file or directory will be mounted in the container

• ro (optional): Makes the mount read-only

• propagation (optional): Sets the mount propagation mode (private, rprivate, shared, rshared, slave, rslave)

Examples:

Note: The host path must exist before creating the container. The container path will be created automatically if it doesn't exist.

MCP Use Cases

Your AI client such as Claude Desktop can use gbox MCP to deliver better results, such as

1. Generating Diagrams

Generate diagrams of Tesla stock prices: https://claude.ai/share/34de8ca3-4e04-441b-9e79-5875fa9fc97a

2. Generating PDFs

Generate PDF of latest AI news: https://claude.ai/share/84600933-dcf2-44be-a2fd-7f49540db57a

3. Analyzing and Calculation

Analyze and compare Nvidia/Tesla market cap: https://claude.ai/share/70c335b7-9fff-4ee7-8459-e6b7462d8994

4. Processing Local Files

Find images in download folder and compress into zip. https://claude.ai/share/f8c4c617-9b32-4062-a8e2-2ab33ef46f42

5. Execute Arbitrary Tasks

Download youtube video: https://claude.ai/share/c2ab6bcb-7032-489f-87d5-cc38f72c2ca9

Develop gbox

Prerequisites

• Go 1.21 or later

• Docker Desktop

• Make

• pnpm (via corepack)

• Node.js 16.13 or later

Build

Running Services

Contributing

We welcome contributions! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

1. Fork the repository

2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b username/feature-name)

3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some feature')

4. Push to the branch (git push origin username/feature-name)

5. Open a Pull Request

Things to Know about Dev and Debug Locally

How to run gbox in dev env instead of the system installed one

1. Stop the installed gbox by gbox cleanup. It will stop the api server so that you can run the api server in dev env.

2. Execute make api-dev in project root.

3. Execute ./gbox box list, this is the command run from your dev env.

How to connect MCP client such as Claude Desktop to the MCP server in dev env

1. Execute make mcp-dev in project root.

2. Execute ./gbox mcp export --merge-to claude

How to open MCP inspect

1. Execute make mcp-inspect in project root.

2. Click the link returned in terminal.

How to build and use image in dev env

1. Execute make build-image-python in project root to build Python image, or make build-images to build all images.

2. Change the image name as needed (e.g., make build-image-typescript for TypeScript image).

3. You may need to delete current sandboxes to make the new image effective ./gbox box delete --all

Why MCP client still get the old MCP content?

1. After you change MCP configuration such as tool definitions, you need to run make build to update the dist/index.js file.

2. You may also need to execute ./gbox mcp export --merge-to claude

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 - see the LICENSE file for details.