Don't build a coding agent sandbox

During the Christmas break of 2025, a significant shift occurred as organizations discovered the productivity benefits of autonomous coding agents, which can operate independently for extended periods, executing tasks like test suites and builds without direct supervision. As a result, there is a growing need for sandbox environments to address security concerns and enhance productivity by allowing these agents to run 24/7, scale horizontally, and refactor code across numerous repositories. Many companies face the decision of building their own sandboxes or partnering with providers like Ona, which offers solutions that integrate easily into existing systems without the need for extensive internal infrastructure efforts. Ona emphasizes the challenges of using traditional infrastructure like containers, CI pipelines, and Kubernetes for coding agents due to their limitations in handling long-running, stateful, and interactive workloads. Instead, Ona provides a self-hosted, but not self-managed, solution that allows organizations to focus on deploying AI software engineers efficiently, avoiding the complexities of building sandbox infrastructure from scratch.