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Sprites (by Fly.io) provides stateful, disposable sandboxes that work well with Mesa. This guide shows the full end-to-end flow: use the Mesa SDK outside the sandbox to set up resources, then use the Sprites 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, sign a short-lived access token, and orchestrate your workflow.
  2. Inside the sandbox — install the mesa CLI, configure it with a short-lived access token, and run mesa mount --daemonize to mount your repos as local directories.
  3. Run your agentcd 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 POSIX Mount.

Create and mount

Sprites are Debian-based, so the standard Mesa install script works directly. Use execFile("sh", ["-c", ...]) to run shell commands — the SDK’s exec() method splits on whitespace and doesn’t support pipes or &&.

Tips

  • Use execFile, not exec. The Sprites SDK’s exec() method naively splits the command string on whitespace, breaking shell features like pipes (|) and chaining (&&). Always use execFile("sh", ["-c", "your command"]) instead.
  • Use scoped, short-lived access tokens. Sign a dedicated token for each sandbox session with only the scopes it needs — it’s signed locally from your API key (which never enters the sandbox) and expires on its own. See Authentication for details.
  • Use --daemonize. Always run mesa mount --daemonize in sandbox environments so Mesa runs as a background process and doesn’t block your agent’s terminal.
  • Don’t forget user_allow_other. See POSIX Mount — this is the most common setup issue in sandbox environments.
  • Sprites are stateful. Unlike ephemeral sandboxes, Sprites persist state across connections. You can stop and resume a sprite without losing the Mesa mount — just re-run mesa mount --daemonize after resuming.