Sandbox

It's a technique for running programs in a space that's isolated from the outside world. Like how a kid can do anything inside a sandbox without making a mess outside of it.

Now that AI agents write and execute their own code, this has become essential — even if the code an AI produces has mistakes or something malicious in it, as long as it's inside a sandbox, it can't touch real files, accounts, or money. Behind almost every announcement about an agent "safely running code" is this mechanism.