hosted-agents

# Hosted Agent Infrastructure

Hosted agents run in remote sandboxed environments rather than on local machines. When designed well, they provide unlimited concurrency, consistent execution environments, and multiplayer collaboration. The critical insight is that session speed should be limited only by model provider time-to-first-token, with all infrastructure setup completed before the user starts their session.

## When to Activate

Activate this skill when:
- Building background coding agents that run independently of user devices
- Designing sandboxed execution environments for agent workloads
- Implementing multiplayer agent sessions with shared state
- Creating multi-client agent interfaces (Slack, Web, Chrome extensions)
- Scaling agent infrastructure beyond local machine constraints
- Building systems where agents spawn sub-agents for parallel work

Do not activate this skill for adjacent work owned by other skills:
- Designing the autonomous research loop, novelty gates, rollback policy, or merge boundaries: `harness-engineering`.
- Choosing supervisor, swarm, or handoff topology without hosted infrastructure concerns: `multi-agent-patterns`.
- Designing the tools used by a hosted agent, such as spawn/status tools or PR tools: `tool-design`.
- Managing file-backed state inside a session rather than the hosted runtime itself: `filesystem-context`.

## Core Concepts

Move agent execution to remote sandboxed environments to eliminate the fundamental limits of local execution: resource contention, environment inconsistency, and single-user constraints. Remote sandboxes unlock unlimited concurrency, reproducible environments, and collaborative workflows because each session gets its own isolated compute with a known-good environment image.

Design the architecture in three layers because each layer scales independently. Build sandbox infrastructure for isolated execution, an API layer for state management and client coordination, and client interfaces for user interaction across platforms. Keep these layers cleanly separated so sandbox changes do not ripple into clients.

## Detailed Topics

### Sandbox Infrastructure

**The Core Challenge**
Eliminate sandbox spin-up latency because users perceive anything over a few seconds as broken. Development environments require cloning repositories, installing dependencies, and running build steps -- do all of this before the user ever submits a prompt.

**Image Registry Pattern**
Pre-build environment images on a regular cadence (every 30 minutes works well) because this makes synchronization with the latest code a fast delta rather than a full clone. Include in each image:
- Cloned repository at a known commit
- All runtime dependencies installed
- Initial setup and build commands completed
- Cached files from running app and test suite once

When starting a session, spin up a sandbox from the most recent image. The repository is at most 30 minutes out of date, making the remaining git sync fast.

**Snapshot and Restore**
Take filesystem snapshots at key points to enable instant restoration for follow-up prompts without re-running setup:
- After initial image build (base snapshot)
- When agent finishes making changes (session snapshot)
- Before sandbox exit for potential follow-up

**Git Configuration for Background Agents**
Configure git identity explicitly in every sandbox because background agents are not tied to a specific user during image builds:
- Generate GitHub app installation tokens for repository access during clone
- Set git config `user.name` and `user.email` when committing and pushing changes
- Use the prompting user's identity for commits, not the app identity

**Warm Pool Strategy**
Maintain a pool of pre-warmed sandboxes for high-volume repositories because cold starts are the primary source of user frustration:
- Keep sandboxes ready before users start sessions
- Expire and recreate pool entries as new image builds complete
- Start warming a sandbox as soon as a user begins typing (predictive warm-up)

### Agent Framework Selection

**Server-First Architecture**
Structure the agent framework as a server first, with TUI and desktop apps as thin clients, because this prevents duplicating agent logic across surfaces:
- Multiple custom clients share one agent backend
- Consistent behavior across all interaction surfaces
- Plugin systems extend functionality without client changes
- Event-driven architectures deliver real-time updates to any connected client

**Code as Source of Truth**
Select frameworks where the agent can read its own source code to understand behavior. Prioritize this because having code as source of truth prevents the agent from hallucinating about its own capabilities -- an underrated failure mode in AI development.

**Plugin System Requirements**
Require a plugin system that supports runtime interception because this enables safety controls and observability without modifying core agent logic:
- Listen to tool execution events (e.g., `tool.execute.before`)
- Block or modify tool calls conditionally
- Inject context or state at runtime

### Speed Optimizations

**Predictive Warm-Up**
Start warming the sandbox as soon as a user begins typing their prompt, not when they submit it, because the typing interval (5-30 seconds) is enough to complete most setup:
- Clone latest changes in parallel with user typing
- Run initial setup before user hits enter
- For fast spin-up, sandbox can be ready before user finishes typing

**Parallel File Reading**
Allow the agent to start reading files immediately even if sync from latest base branch is not complete, because in large repositories incoming prompts rarely touch recently-changed files:
- Agent can research immediately without waiting for git sync
- Block file edits (not reads) until synchronization completes
- This separation is safe because read-time data staleness of 30 minutes rarely matters for research

**Maximize Build-Time Work**
Move everything possible