GitHub - finbarr/yolobox: Let your AI go full send. Your home directory stays home.

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Let your AI go full send. Your home directory stays home.

Run Claude Code, Codex, or any AI coding agent in "yolo mode" without nuking your home directory.

The Problem

AI coding agents are incredibly powerful when you let them run commands without asking permission. But one misinterpreted prompt and rm -rf ~ later, you're restoring from backup (yea right, as if you have backups lol).

The Solution

yolobox runs your AI agent inside a container where:

• ✅ Your project directory is mounted at its real path (e.g., /Users/you/project)
• ✅ The agent has full permissions and sudo inside the container
• ✅ Your home directory is NOT mounted (unless you explicitly opt in)
• ✅ Persistent volumes keep tools and configs across sessions
• ✅ Session continuity - AI sessions can be resumed across host/container boundary

The AI can go absolutely wild inside the sandbox. Your actual home directory? Untouchable.

Quick Start

# Install via Homebrew (macOS/Linux)
brew install finbarr/tap/yolobox

# Or install via script (requires Go)
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/finbarr/yolobox/master/install.sh | bash

Then from any project:

cd /path/to/your/project
yolobox claude    # Let it rip

Or use any other AI tool: yolobox codex, yolobox gemini, yolobox copilot.

Runtime Support

• macOS: Docker Desktop, OrbStack, Colima, or Apple container (macOS Tahoe+)
• Linux: Docker or Podman

yolobox auto-detects available runtimes. To use a specific runtime:

yolobox claude --runtime container   # Apple container
yolobox claude --runtime docker      # Docker
yolobox claude --runtime podman      # Podman

Memory: Claude Code needs 4GB+ RAM allocated to Docker. Colima defaults to 2GB which will cause OOM kills. Increase with: colima stop && colima start --memory 8

Commands

# AI tool shortcuts (recommended)
yolobox claude              # Run Claude Code
yolobox codex               # Run OpenAI Codex
yolobox gemini              # Run Gemini CLI
yolobox opencode            # Run OpenCode
yolobox copilot             # Run GitHub Copilot

# General commands
yolobox                     # Drop into interactive shell (for manual use)
yolobox run <cmd...>        # Run any command in sandbox
yolobox setup               # Configure yolobox settings
yolobox upgrade             # Update binary and pull latest image
yolobox config              # Show resolved configuration
yolobox reset --force       # Delete volumes (fresh start)
yolobox version             # Show version
yolobox help                # Show help

Flags

Note: Flags go after the subcommand: yolobox run --flag cmd or yolobox claude --flag, not yolobox --flag run cmd.

Networking: By default, yolobox uses Docker's bridge network (internet access, no container DNS). Use --network <name> to join a docker compose network and access services by name. Use --no-network for complete isolation.

Configuration

Run yolobox setup to configure your preferences with an interactive wizard.

Settings are saved to ~/.config/yolobox/config.toml:

git_config = true
gh_token = true
ssh_agent = true
no_network = true
network = "my_compose_network"
no_yolo = true

You can also create .yolobox.toml in your project for project-specific settings:

mounts = ["../shared-libs:/libs:ro"]
env = ["DEBUG=1"]
no_network = true

Priority: CLI flags > project config > global config > defaults.

Note: Setting claude_config = true or gemini_config = true in your config will copy your host config on every container start, overwriting any changes made inside the container (including auth and history). Prefer using --claude-config or --gemini-config for one-time syncs.

Copying Global Agent Instructions

The --copy-agent-instructions flag copies your global/user-level agent instruction files into the container. This is useful when you have custom rules or preferences defined globally that you want available inside yolobox.

Files copied (if they exist on your host):

Note: This only copies global instruction files, not full configs (credentials, settings, history). For Claude's full config, use --claude-config instead.

You can also set copy_agent_instructions = true in your config file for persistent use.

Auto-Forwarded Environment Variables

These are automatically passed into the container if set:

• ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
• OPENAI_API_KEY
• COPILOT_GITHUB_TOKEN / GH_TOKEN / GITHUB_TOKEN
• OPENROUTER_API_KEY
• GEMINI_API_KEY

Note: On macOS, gh CLI stores tokens in Keychain, not environment variables. Use --gh-token (or gh_token = true in config) to extract and forward your GitHub CLI token.

What's in the Box?

The base image comes batteries-included:

• AI CLIs: Claude Code, Gemini CLI, OpenAI Codex, OpenCode, Copilot (all pre-configured for full-auto mode!)
• Runtimes: Node.js 22, Python 3, Go, Bun
• Build tools: make, cmake, gcc
• Git + GitHub CLI
• Common utilities: ripgrep, fd, fzf, jq, vim

Need something else? The AI has sudo.

AI CLIs Run in YOLO Mode

Inside yolobox, the AI CLIs are aliased to skip all permission prompts:

No confirmations, no guardrails—just pure unfiltered AI, the way nature intended.

Philosophy: It's the AI's Box, Not Yours

yolobox is designed for AI agents, not humans. The typical workflow is:

yolobox claude    # Launch Claude Code in the sandbox
yolobox codex     # Or Codex, or any other AI tool

That's it. You launch the AI and let it work. You're not meant to manually enter the box and set things up—the AI does that itself.

Why? The AI agent has full sudo access inside the container. If it needs a compiler, database, or framework—it just installs it. Named volumes persist these installations across sessions, so setup happens once. You point it at your project and let it cook.

Security Model

How It Works

yolobox uses container isolation (Docker or Podman) as its security boundary. When you run yolobox, it:

1. Starts a container with your project mounted at its real path
2. Runs as user yolo with sudo access inside the container
3. Does NOT mount your home directory (unless explicitly requested)
4. Uses Linux namespaces to isolate the container's filesystem, process tree, and network

The AI agent has full root access inside the container, but the container's view of the filesystem is restricted to what yolobox explicitly mounts.

Trust Boundary

The trust boundary is the container runtime (Docker/Podman). This means:

• ✅ Protection against accidental rm -rf ~ or credential theft
• ✅ Protection against most filesystem-based attacks
• ⚠️ NOT protection against container escapes — a sufficiently advanced exploit targeting kernel vulnerabilities could break out
• ⚠️ NOT protection against a malicious AI deliberately trying to escape — this is defense against accidents, not adversarial attacks

If you're worried about an AI actively trying to escape containment, you need VM-level isolation (see "Hardening Options" below).

Threat Model

What yolobox protects:

• Your home directory from accidental deletion
• Your SSH keys, credentials, and dotfiles
• Other projects on your machine
• Host system files and configurations

What yolobox does NOT protect:

• Your project directory (it's mounted read-write by default)
• Network access (use --no-network to disable, or --network <name> for specific networks)
• The container itself (the AI has root via sudo)
• Against kernel exploits or container escape vulnerabilities

Hardening Options

Level 1: Basic (default)

yolobox  # Standard container isolation

Level 2: Reduced attack surface

yolobox run --no-network --readonly-project claude

Level 3: Rootless Podman (recommended for security-conscious users)

# Install podman and run rootless
yolobox --runtime podman

Rootless Podman runs the container without root privileges on the host, using user namespaces. This significantly reduces the impact of container escapes since the container's "root" maps to your unprivileged user on the host.

Level 4: VM isolation (maximum security)

For true isolation with no shared kernel, consider running yolobox inside a VM:

• macOS: Use a Linux VM via UTM, Parallels, or Lima
• Linux: Use a Podman machine or dedicated VM

This adds significant overhead but eliminates kernel-level attack surface.

Network Isolation with Podman

For users who want to prevent container access to the local network while preserving internet access:

# Rootless podman uses slirp4netns by default, which provides
# network isolation from the host network
podman run --network=slirp4netns:allow_host_loopback=false ...

yolobox doesn't currently expose this as a flag, but you can achieve it by running rootless Podman (the default network mode for rootless is slirp4netns).

Building the Base Image

This builds ghcr.io/finbarr/yolobox:latest locally, overriding the remote image.

Customizing the Image

Want to pre-install additional packages or tools? Create your own image:

1. Clone and modify:

git clone https://github.com/finbarr/yolobox.git
cd yolobox
# Edit the Dockerfile to add your packages

2. Build with a custom name:

make image IMAGE=my-yolobox:latest

3. Configure yolobox to use it:

mkdir -p ~/.config/yolobox
echo 'image = "my-yolobox:latest"' > ~/.config/yolobox/config.toml

Using a custom image name means yolobox upgrade won't overwrite your customization. When you update your Dockerfile, just rebuild with the same command.

Development

Building

make build          # Build binary
make test           # Run tests
make lint           # Run linters
make image          # Build Docker image
make install        # Install to ~/.local/bin

Versioning

Version is derived automatically from git tags via git describe:

• Tagged commit: v0.1.1
• After tag: v0.1.1-3-gead833b (3 commits after tag)
• Uncommitted changes: adds -dirty

No files to edit for releases. The Makefile handles it.

Releasing

To release a new version:

git tag v0.1.2
git push origin master --tags

That's it. GitHub Actions will automatically:

1. Build binaries for linux/darwin × amd64/arm64
2. Create a GitHub release with binaries and checksums
3. Build and push Docker image to ghcr.io/finbarr/yolobox

Version policy:

• Patch bump (0.1.x): Bug fixes, security fixes
• Minor bump (0.x.0): New features
• Major bump (x.0.0): Breaking changes

License

MIT