sandbox-mcp: Scott Hanselman's throwaway Windows 11 sandboxes catch a missing VC++ redist in 29.8s
victor_explore · x · 2026-11-08
Scott Hanselman open-sourced sandbox-mcp (MIT, 310 stars): an MCP server and CLI that gives AI agents a fresh, disposable, real Windows 11 machine via Windows Sandbox — boot it, deploy your app, drive the UI, catch the crash, keep the evidence, then delete the PC.
- Solves the classic false positive where coding agents claim a Windows app "works" simply because the dev machine already has the runtimes installed
- Measured demo: on a fresh network-off guest, NativeProof.exe failed in 29.8s with a missing VC++ redistributable; after verified provisioning, a new guest passed in 30.9s — runtimes install only when explicitly requested via sbx run app.exe --provision auto
- sbx deps app.exe diagnoses dependencies; the MCP adapter exposes the whole sandbox lifecycle to any agent
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