cua-sandboxes

cua-sandboxes is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from trycua/cua. It costs 98 tokens per session (1,563 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

Tools for creating disposable Linux or macOS computers, either locally or in the cloud, and running commands or browsing inside them. A disposable computer is isolated from the main machine and can be deleted after use.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to run code safely, test an application or website, operate a desktop interface, browse the web, or fill in a web form.
Why use it?
It provides a separate environment for code, applications, websites, and desktop tasks without changing the main computer. It also makes cleanup easier when the work is finished.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to run code safely, test an application or website, operate a desktop interface, browse the web, or fill in a web form.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/trycua/cua/cua-sandboxes
About the project

trycua/cua is a toolkit for building and testing AI agents that operate computers by seeing screens, clicking controls, and typing across operating systems and virtual machines. It serves agent developers, benchmark authors, and teams generating training data for computer-use models. Catalogue add-ons provide ways to operate Cua drivers and related agent workflows.

trycua/cua · 29,871 stars · on GitHub · cua.ai

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.

Any agent
npx skills add trycua/cua --skill cua-sandboxes
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/trycua/cua

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for cua-sandboxes

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/trycua/cua/cua-sandboxes/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/trycua/cua/cua-sandboxes)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/trycua/cua/cua-sandboxes"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/trycua/cua/cua-sandboxes/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for cua-sandboxes

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/trycua/cua/cua-sandboxes"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/trycua/cua/cua-sandboxes.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 98 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,563 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 5.1 $0.00098 $0.01563
Opus 5.5 $0.00039 $0.00625
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00020 $0.00313
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00156

Measured 14d ago against content hash 792be84be21c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

cua-sandboxes scanned grade A with 0 findings 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 14d 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.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

libs/cua/skills/cua-sandboxes/SKILL.md · 140 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 140 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

cua sandboxes

A sandbox is a disposable computer: a container or VM on this machine or in the Cua cloud. The cua CLI and the cua SDK (Python, TypeScript, Swift, Kotlin, Rust) share one runtime and one list of sandboxes.

Before you start

cua --version            # the Rust cua CLI
cua auth status          # the cloud needs `cua auth login` (or CUA_CLIENT_ID/CUA_CLIENT_SECRET)
cua config get default.on   # where sandboxes run without --on (local unless changed)
cua runtime doctor       # local runtimes (containers, gVisor, QEMU, Lume); read-only

Local sandboxes need no account. Cloud sandboxes are metered: always delete them when done.

Create

cua sb create linux --name dev                 # local (default): a gVisor container
cua sb create linux --kind vm --name dev       # local Linux VM (QEMU)
cua sb create macos --name mac                 # local macOS VM (Apple silicon, Lume)
cua sb create linux --on cloud --name dev      # the Cua cloud
cua sb create ghcr.io/org/image:tag --name x   # any OCI image, local or --on cloud
cua sb create --on direct:127.0.0.1:3211 --token TOKEN --name mine   # an existing machine running cua-spacesd

--on is where (local, cloud, direct:<addr>), --kind what (auto, container, vm), --runtime which engine (auto; local gvisor, runc, qemu, lume; cloud gvisor, kubevirt). An impossible combination fails with invalid placement and lists the valid values. Local runtimes are set up on first use (cua runtime setup does it explicitly). Omit --name for a generated name. cua sb ls prints each sandbox's ref (local:dev, cloud:dev, direct:host:port); every NAME argument takes a ref or a bare name that is unique across locations (--local / --cloud narrow it). Add --json to any command for machine-readable output. exec, shell, cp, screenshots and GUI control go through cua-spacesd, so use an image that ships it (the linux alias does). Plain images still get lifecycle, logs and port-forward.

Read the full file on GitHub · 140 lines

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. 14d ago First seen · 140 lines · 98 tokens per session scan A 792be84be21c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

cua-sandboxes is a skill published in the GitHub repository trycua/cua (29,871 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 98 tokens to every session and 1,563 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-10-02.