[HN Gopher] The wild six weeks for NanoClaw's creator that led t...
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       The wild six weeks for NanoClaw's creator that led to a deal with
       Docker
        
       Author : wateroo
       Score  : 59 points
       Date   : 2026-03-13 19:35 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
        
       | pinkmuffinere wrote:
       | This article is remarkably light on the deal with docker, it's
       | basically just mentioned in passing:
       | 
       | > Now, on Friday, Cohen announced a deal with Docker -- the
       | company that essentially invented the container technology
       | NanoClaw is built on, and counts millions of developers and
       | nearly 80,000 enterprise customers -- to integrate Docker
       | Sandboxes into NanoClaw.
       | 
       | Relevant link: https://nanoclaw.dev/blog/nanoclaw-docker-
       | sandboxes
        
       | RobRivera wrote:
       | So I am late to the party on this; I can ABSOLUTELY see what
       | would fuel a 48 hr code binge. I would be LIVID if a package I
       | downloaded did such a bulk pull from my Whatsapp, and even
       | further enraged if I found a bulk of packages integrated that led
       | me to believe security was never a single thought.
       | 
       | Future innovators, don't take security for granted; someone who
       | cares will eat your lunch.
        
       | chaosprint wrote:
       | "The stronger boundary protects the machine while the agent is
       | coding, testing and improvising. It does not protect the rest of
       | the world from the permissions you have already granted. A
       | better-isolated runtime will not stop the bot from spraying
       | outbound messages, sending a stupid email, or otherwise turning
       | your authority into a minor public nuisance."
       | 
       | from:
       | 
       | https://entropytown.com/articles/2026-03-12-openclaw-sandbox...
       | 
       | plus, any idea why not podman or firecracker?
        
         | dbmikus wrote:
         | From the article, it looks like they integrated with Docker
         | because someone at Docker reached out about collaborating on
         | the integration.
         | 
         | Regarding security, I think you need three things:
         | 1. You need the agent to run inside a sandbox.       2. You
         | need a safe perimeter or proxy that can apply deterministic
         | filtering rules on what makes it into the AI agent's sandbox
         | and the HTTP requests and responses that agent sends out from
         | the sandbox.       3. The bot should have its own email
         | accounts, or maybe be configured to only send/read from certain
         | email addresses
         | 
         | I'm working on a product that makes it as easy to spin up
         | remote agent sandboxes as it is to git push and git pull. Then
         | when we get that working well we're putting a proxy around each
         | sandbox to let users control filtering rules.
         | 
         | I personally see a future where there are many different types
         | of *Claws, coding agents, etc. and I think they need a new
         | "operating system", so to speak.
         | 
         | Self-plug at the end: https://github.com/gofixpoint/amika. The
         | OSS part of my startup, focused on sandbox coding agents right
         | now :)
         | 
         | PS: I enjoyed the entropytown.com blog! bookmarking it
        
         | nonameiguess wrote:
         | That seems to be a tough question to answer. My first instinct
         | was to say there isn't a meaningful difference since they're
         | both using the same runtime (runc) and have an identical CLI. I
         | hoped maybe the source code for this project would be helpful,
         | but the installer script isn't in the repo, and when I download
         | it to inspect, it's not consistent on its own name, links out
         | to documentation that doesn't exist, and seems to be calling
         | docker subcommands that don't exist, at least not in any
         | version of docker I have.
         | 
         | It _appears_ that docker now offers a  "sandbox" subcommand
         | specifically meant for fencing AI agents inside of micro VMs
         | instead of containers at all:
         | https://docs.docker.com/ai/sandboxes/. This is the page the
         | installer script meant to link to but got wrong. If you type
         | docker --help, this doesn't show up as an available subcommand
         | but apparently it is. The documentation says you need Docker
         | Desktop 4.58+, which the installer script is again wrong about,
         | saying you need 4.40+, and it is only available on Mac and
         | Windows, not Linux.
         | 
         | This does sound more or less the same as firecracker, but
         | firecracker only runs on Linux, so I suppose it didn't meet
         | this guy's requirement that he probably uses a Mac.
        
       | combyn8tor wrote:
       | "In researching a hiccup with performance, he stumbled across a
       | file where the OpenClaw agent had downloaded all of his WhatsApp
       | messages and stored them in plain, unencrypted text on his
       | computer. Not just the work-related messages it was given
       | explicit access to, but all of them, his personal messages too."
       | 
       | Now the agent can do the same thing, but it's in a container and
       | it's doing it with a Rust binary, so you know it's safe. /s
       | 
       | Edit: It's not Rust.
        
         | mmcclure wrote:
         | Definitely a sign of the times that (pre-edit) I thought, "oh
         | this person's thinking of the wrong claw, IronClaw is the Rust
         | one"
        
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       (page generated 2026-03-13 23:00 UTC)