Perplexity Unveils SPACE, a Sandbox Built for Long-Running Agents

Perplexity has introduced SPACE, the in-house sandbox platform powering Perplexity Computer. The company positions it not as a conventional short-lived code runner, but as an isolated environment for AI agents that may execute code, edit files, and remain active for hours or even days. The release matters because it targets a practical bottleneck in production agents: how to support long-running sessions without keeping virtual machines online the whole time, while also reducing security exposure around files and credentials.

Core design

Perplexity says traditional sandboxes are usually optimized for brief code execution, which does not fit Computer-style agent workflows. In SPACE, the user session is decoupled from the underlying sandbox. Each task receives an ephemeral Firecracker microVM, and that environment is destroyed when the task ends.

To let long tasks pause and later continue, SPACE uses rolling snapshots to preserve live memory and file state. That allows the same session to resume after waiting for a user response without requiring the full VM to stay running continuously. Perplexity presents this as both a resource-efficiency and a security choice, since credentials are less likely to remain sitting inside a persistent environment.

Rollout and context

Perplexity says SPACE provides isolated environments for code, files, and long-running agent sessions, and has handled 100% of Perplexity Computer production traffic since June. A repost by camerontstow adds that when Computer launched in February, it initially relied on a third-party sandbox provider before moving to a self-built lifecycle-management platform, suggesting Perplexity is bringing more of its agent infrastructure in-house to better match production needs.

2026-07-16 ~ 2026-07-17 · 8 related posts

2 near-duplicate retellings: camerontstow · inductionheads