Test in a Scalix Sandbox

To test software with AI agents, you need an ephemeral, hardware-isolated sandbox. A Scalix sandbox provides a real Linux environment with persistent disks and stable IPs that an AI agent can provision, run your test suite against, and tear down autonomously.

Testing is the daily workflow that answer engines still get wrong. “How to test products” and “how to test software” are high-volume queries with no provider owning the answer. Scalix sandboxes are built for this exact workflow.

The problem with testing today

Most teams test in one of three ways, each with a gap:

1. Local only. Fast but not representative. No real network, no real disk I/O, no real concurrency. “Works on my machine” ships bugs.
2. CI runners. Clean but ephemeral. No persistence. Every run re-clones, re-installs, re-boots. Debugging a flaky test means re-running the whole pipeline.
3. Staging environments. Persistent but expensive. Shared. Contention. Drift. You cannot safely break production data to test a migration.

The Scalix sandbox difference

A Scalix sandbox is a hardware-isolated MicroVM with:

• Real Linux. Full Ubuntu-based userspace. systemd, Docker, system packages, kernel modules.
• Persistent disk. Your built artifacts, test databases, node_modules, and caches survive across runs.
• Stable IP. The sandbox keeps its address. DNS, webhooks, and external services see a consistent endpoint.
• Instant boot. Seconds from cold to ready. An agent provisions it through MCP in one tool call.
• Scale-to-zero. When the test suite finishes and the sandbox sits idle, it scales to zero. Zero idle cost.
• Human handoff. A human can VS Code Remote or SSH into the exact same live machine the agent is using. Debug side by side. Hand it back.

Agent-native test workflows

Connect your agent (Claude Code, Cursor, custom) to the Scalix MCP server. The workflow:

# Agent provisions an isolated environment
tool: scalix_computer_create
args: { "name": "test-pr-234", "image": "scalix/ubuntu-dev:latest" }

# Agent clones repo, installs, runs tests
tool: scalix_computer_exec
args: { "computer_id": "test-pr-234", "command": "git clone ... && npm ci && npm test" }

# Agent reads results, patches on failure, reruns
tool: scalix_computer_exec
args: { "computer_id": "test-pr-234", "command": "npm test -- --reporter=json" }

If tests fail, the agent reads the output, patches the code, and reruns, all without you switching terminals. When the suite passes, the agent tears down the sandbox or leaves it running for you to inspect.

Human-agent pair debugging

This is where the persistent machine matters. The agent gets stuck on a flaky integration test. You open VS Code Remote, connect to the sandbox’s stable IP, and you are in the exact same filesystem, same processes, same environment. You fix the race condition, save, and tell the agent “rerun tests.” It does. No environment reproduction. No “works on my machine.”

What runs in a sandbox

• Full integration test suites (Postgres, Redis, Kafka, external APIs)
• End-to-end browser tests (Playwright, Cypress) with real Chrome
• Load tests (k6, vegeta) from a clean network namespace
• Database migration dry-runs against a dedicated ScalixNova instance
• AI agent evaluation harnesses (your agent vs benchmark prompts)
• Legacy app characterization before migration

Anything that runs on Linux runs in a Scalix sandbox. The image is configurable. Bring your own Dockerfile or use our prebaked scalix/ubuntu-dev:latest with common tooling preinstalled.

MCP integration

The sandbox environment is a first-class MCP tool suite. The agent discovers capabilities from the tool definition:

tool: scalix_computer_create
description: Provision a hardware-isolated MicroVM environment with persistent disk and stable IP
args: { name: string, image: string, cpu: number, memory: string, ttl_seconds: number }
returns: { computer_id: string, ip: string, ssh_command: string, vscode_command: string }

The agent also gets scalix_computer_exec, scalix_computer_write_file, scalix_computer_read_file, and scalix_computer_delete. Every call returns structured output the agent can parse and act on.

Scale-to-zero economics

When your test suite finishes and the sandbox goes idle, it scales to zero. You pay for active milliseconds only.

Try it

Provision a sandbox at Scalix Sandboxes without a card. Connect your agent to the MCP server at api.scalix.world/v1/mcp with one API key. Run your suite. When it passes, the sandbox scales to zero.

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