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Freestyle provides performant ephemeral VMs that are full linux systems. Freestyle is ideal when you want to give your AI a whole computer, not just run code snippets. This guide shows the full end-to-end flow: use the Mesa SDK outside the sandbox to set up resources, then use the Freestyle SDK to configure and mount Mesa inside the sandbox. The general flow for any sandbox integration is:
  1. Outside the sandbox — use the Mesa SDK (TypeScript or Python) to create repos, manage API keys, and orchestrate your workflow.
  2. Inside the sandbox — install the mesa CLI, configure it with your API key, and run mesa mount --daemonize to mount your repos as local directories.
  3. Run your agent — cd into the mount path and launch your agent (e.g. Claude Code, Codex, or a custom agent). Any file edits are automatically persisted back to Mesa.
For details on FUSE setup, system dependencies, and container configuration, see CLI Mounts.

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Setup

The example uses three environment variables: 
MESA_ORG=your-org
MESA_API_KEY=your-mesa-api-key
FREESTYLE_API_KEY=your-freestyle-api-key

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Example Code

Freestyle sandboxes are Debian-based by default, so the standard Mesa install script works out of the box. 
import { Freestyle } from "freestyle";
import { Mesa } from "@mesadev/sdk";

const mesa = new Mesa({ apiKey: process.env.MESA_API_KEY });
const freestyle = new Freestyle({ apiKey: process.env.FREESTYLE_API_KEY });

// --- Outside the sandbox: set up Mesa resources ---

// Create a repo (or use an existing one)
const repo = await mesa.repos.create({ name: "agent-workspace" });

// Create a scoped, short-lived API key for the sandbox
const ephemeralKey = await mesa.apiKeys.create({
  name: "sandbox-session",
  scopes: ["read", "write"],
  expires_in_seconds: 3600, // 1 hour
  repo_ids: [repo.id],
});

// --- Inside the sandbox: install and mount Mesa ---

const { vm } = await freestyle.vms.create();

// Mesa's installer will install all its dependencies through your system's package manager.
await vm.exec("curl -fsSL https://mesa.dev/install.sh | sh");

// Enable non-root access to the FUSE mount and fix /dev/fuse permissions.
await vm.exec(
  [
    "sed -i 's/^#user_allow_other/user_allow_other/' /etc/fuse.conf",
    "chmod 666 /dev/fuse",
  ].join(" && ")
);

// Start Mesa as a background daemon.
await vm.exec(`MESA_ORGS=my-org:${ephemeralKey.key} mesa mount -d -y`);

// --- Run your agent ---

await vm.exec(
  'cd ~/.local/share/mesa/mnt/my-org/agent-workspace \
    && claude "Implement the feature described in TODO.md"'
);

​
Tips

  • Prefer short-lived scoped keys in production. The example uses MESA_API_KEY directly to stay small, but production flows should mint an ephemeral key outside the VM and pass that into MESA_ORGS. See Auth and Permissions for details.
  • Install Mesa ahead of time when startup time matters. Installing at runtime is fine for a demo, but preinstalling Mesa and its dependencies makes VM startup faster and more predictable.
  • Always use --daemonize. This keeps Mesa mounted while your shell or agent continues to run.
  • Don’t forget user_allow_other. See CLI Mounts for the most common FUSE setup issue in sandbox environments.
  • Expect mount paths to depend on the VM user. In this example the VM runs as root, so Mesa mounts under /root/.local/share/mesa/mnt.