Perplexity Open-Sources SPACE, Its Agent Sandbox Platform, Surviving 108 Escape Attempts
On October 16, Perplexity announced the open-sourcing of SPACE (Sandboxed Platform for Agentic Code Execution), the first component of its Agentic Runtime Platform, under Apache 2.0, aiming to raise the security baseline for agent products.
Confirmed
- SPACE is the sandbox platform powering all task execution in Perplexity Computer and is now open source
- Core design: every agent task gets its own Firecracker microVM, with tasks running as root inside the sandbox
- Credentials and outbound traffic are isolated out of the VM, preventing sandboxed code from touching sensitive information
- Alongside, Perplexity published security research "Escaping SPACE: Part I": 9 frontier models were given root inside SPACE sandbox VMs and launched 108 escape attempts — none ever reached the host
Why it matters
Agent products routinely execute model-generated code, making sandbox escape a core security risk. SPACE combines microVM-level isolation with credential isolation and validates its defenses through red-teaming with frontier models, giving the industry a reusable open-source security baseline.
2026-10-16 ~ 2026-10-16 · 10 related posts
Primary sources
- Perplexity open-sources SPACE, the sandbox platform powering its Computer agents — AravSrinivas ·
- Perplexity red-teams SPACE with frontier models: 108 escape attempts, zero host escapes — perplexity_ai ·
- Perplexity open-sources SPACE, the sandbox platform behind its agents and RL workloads — denisyarats ·
- Perplexity open-sources SPACE, the Firecracker microVM sandbox behind Perplexity Computer — perplexity_ai · 2026-10-16
- [source] Perplexity red-teams SPACE with frontier models: 108 escape attempts, zero host escapes — perplexity_ai · 2026-10-16
- Perplexity open-sources SPACE sandbox; 108 escape attempts by frontier models all failed — perplexity_ai · 2026-10-16
- Perplexity open-sources SPACE, its Firecracker microVM agent sandbox — perplexity_ai · 2026-10-16
- Perplexity Open-Sources SPACE, First Piece of Its Agentic Runtime Platform — perplexity_ai · 2026-10-16
- [source] Perplexity open-sources SPACE, the sandbox platform powering its Computer agents — AravSrinivas · 2026-10-16
- Perplexity open-sources SPACE sandbox, partners with CoreWeave, Akamai, Crusoe — AravSrinivas · 2026-10-16
3 near-duplicate retellings: AravSrinivas · denisyarats · sull