openshell-cli

A guide to the OpenShell command-line tool for managing sandboxes, providers, policies, services, gateways, and inference routes. A command-line tool is a program operated by typing commands in a terminal.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create and manage sandboxes, register gateways, configure providers, update policies, expose services, set options, and route inference requests.
Why use it?
It helps developers navigate OpenShell's multi-step management tasks and use its built-in help when a command or option is unfamiliar.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/nvidia/openshell/openshell-cli
Any agent
npx skills add NVIDIA/OpenShell --skill openshell-cli
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/NVIDIA/OpenShell

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 127 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 7,863 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00127 $0.07863
Opus 5 $0.00063 $0.03932
Sonnet 5 $0.00025 $0.01573
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00786

Measured 2d ago against content hash c82a2192bcd3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

openshell-cli scanned grade A with 1 finding against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

| Incremental policy update | `openshell policy update <name> --add-endpoint host:443:read-only:rest:enforce --binary /usr/bin/curl --wait` |
.agents/skills/openshell-cli/SKILL.md · 819 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 819 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

OpenShell CLI

Guide agents through using the openshell CLI for sandbox and platform management -- from basic operations to advanced multi-step workflows.

Overview

The OpenShell CLI (openshell) is the primary interface for managing sandboxes, providers, policies, settings, exposed services, inference routes, and gateway registrations. Gateway service lifecycle is handled outside the CLI by packages, systemd, Helm, or development tasks. This skill teaches agents how to orchestrate CLI commands for common and complex workflows.

Companion skill: For creating or modifying sandbox policy YAML content (network rules, L7 inspection, access presets), use the generate-sandbox-policy skill. This skill covers the CLI commands for the policy lifecycle; generate-sandbox-policy covers policy content authoring.

Self-teaching: The CLI has comprehensive built-in help. When you encounter a command or option not covered in this skill, walk the help tree:

openshell --help                    # Top-level commands
openshell <group> --help            # Subcommands in a group
openshell <group> <cmd> --help      # Flags for a specific command

This is your primary fallback. Use it freely -- the CLI's help output is authoritative and always up-to-date.

Prerequisites

  • openshell is on the PATH (install via cargo install --path crates/openshell-cli)
  • A reachable OpenShell gateway backed by Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, or the experimental VM driver
  • Docker is running only when using BYOC local builds or Docker-backed development workflows
  • For Kubernetes deployments: kubectl and Helm access to the target cluster

Command Reference

See cli-reference.md for the current command tree and commonly used flags. Use it as a quick-reference, then confirm uncommon or security-sensitive options with --help.


Workflow 1: Getting Started

Use this workflow when the user has a gateway endpoint and wants to get a sandbox running for the first time.

Read the full file on GitHub · 819 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 819 lines · 127 tokens per session scan A c82a2192bcd3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

openshell-cli is a skill published in the GitHub repository NVIDIA/OpenShell (8,421 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 127 tokens to every session and 7,863 once invoked, about $0.0006 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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