The Pulse
Perplexity Open-Sources SPACE, Its Firecracker Sandbox for Agents
Perplexity released SPACE, its Firecracker-based agent sandbox, under the Apache 2.0 license on October 15, 2026. The company says the platform runs all Perplexity Computer sessions and handled millions of sandbox creations per day since Ju
AI.info Team · Written with AI ·
Perplexity publishes the runtime behind Computer
On October 15, Perplexity released SPACE, the sandbox platform it uses to run code for its Computer agent, as open-source software under the Apache 2.0 license. The company says it replaced its commercial sandbox provider with SPACE in July, and has since used it for every Computer session. “Today, we're open-sourcing SPACE to give developers a foundation for building safer agent systems and contributing to stronger protections across the industry,” Perplexity wrote in its announcement.
SPACE stands for Sandboxed Platform for Agentic Code Execution. The public repository describes a service that creates Linux environments in isolated Firecracker microvirtual machines, runs commands through an HTTP API, streams their output and manages each sandbox’s lifecycle. The code is written in Rust, but applications use the HTTP interface rather than needing to embed a Rust library.
Each sandbox starts from a template and has its own virtual machine and writable filesystem. An application can run several commands in one environment, then keep it, pause it, suspend it or delete it. The architecture guide distinguishes the management API from the separate data-plane connection used to stream command output.
Isolation, recovery and network controls
Perplexity says SPACE keeps platform-held credentials and network management outside the untrusted sandbox. That design lets an agent reach authorized services without placing those credentials in its working environment. The platform also supports pausing and resuming work, branching sessions and restoring checkpoints, so a task can continue after a review or interruption.
The open release gives developers access to the implementation and its deployment guidance, not a hosted service that requires no setup. The repository includes a local Kubernetes Kind installation path and documentation for the API, templates and operations. Its architecture also describes a direct worker adapter that can run without Kubernetes.
Perplexity reports a network-bypass finding
Perplexity says SPACE handled millions of sandbox creations per day after entering use in July. In a comparison on the same production traffic, the company says creation was three to five times faster than with its previous provider.
The company also reports testing SPACE against agents attempting to cross security boundaries. In 108 attempts, it found no escape from a guest virtual machine to its host, but some tests bypassed network restrictions. Perplexity says it fixed those weaknesses and that neither identified method worked in follow-up testing. Those results describe the company’s evaluation; they do not establish that every deployment or configuration will resist every attack.
Cloud partners are testing deployments
Perplexity says CoreWeave and Akamai have tested and launched SPACE on their cloud platforms and are working with the company to make it available to customers. Crusoe is partnering with Perplexity to bring the platform to its Managed AI Services portfolio.
Those partnerships indicate that the release is aimed beyond teams running experiments on a laptop: developers can inspect the code, while cloud providers explore how to offer it in their own environments. The public project’s practical boundaries are set by the configurations and components documented in its repository, including the Firecracker-based virtual-machine isolation, API, deployment setup and security controls.