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A sandbox is the isolated, disposable cloud container the Revolte AI agent works in whenever it needs to touch a real codebase—cloning a repository, editing files, running shell commands, or executing tests. Every AI Chat thread and every automated workflow run gets its own sandbox, scoped to that single thread or run, so agent activity never touches your local machine or a shared environment.
Sandboxes power both interactive AI Chat sessions and automated Jira Workflow runs. Whenever you see “Sandbox Provisioning” in an agent run’s execution stages, or a live Code tab in an AI Chat thread, it’s backed by a sandbox.

How a sandbox is set up

When a sandbox starts, it’s set up in one of two ways:
  • Connected to a repository: If your thread or workflow is linked to a repository, the sandbox authenticates with your Git provider and clones the target branch, then checks out a dedicated working branch for the agent’s changes.
  • Fresh project: If no repository is connected yet, the sandbox initializes an empty local Git project. You can link it to a remote repository later and push the work the agent has done.
From there, the agent can run shell commands, read and write files, and validate its own changes—all inside that container.

Sandbox lifecycle

A sandbox moves through the following states over its lifetime:

Inactivity timeout

Sandboxes aren’t kept running indefinitely. If a sandbox sits idle, Revolte warns you it will be torn down in about a minute, then automatically deprovisions it to free up resources. Does that mean my changes are gone? Not if your thread is linked to a repository. Just before teardown, Revolte automatically commits and pushes whatever the agent had changed as a draft commit to the working branch on your Git provider—so the work survives even if you weren’t there to save it.
This safety net depends on a linked repository to push to. If you start a thread as a fresh project (no repository connected yet) and let it idle out before linking one, there’s nowhere for that draft commit to go—the attempt fails silently and those changes are lost with the container. Link a repository, or commit manually, before stepping away from an unlinked sandbox.
Reopening the thread afterward provisions a fresh sandbox, picking up from the last commit that made it out—not from the exact in-progress state you left.

Monthly sandbox hours

Sandbox compute time is tracked against your organization’s monthly allotment, which scales with your plan: If your organization’s monthly sandbox hours are used up, any active sandboxes are stopped and you’ll see a notice explaining that usage has been depleted for the billing period. See Pricing & Usage Plans for full plan details.

Sandbox size

When starting a new AI Chat thread, you can choose the size of the sandbox the agent runs in: Pick a larger sandbox for workloads with heavier build steps, larger dependency installs, or more memory-intensive test suites. Automated Jira Workflow runs use a size appropriate for the task automatically.

Working inside a sandbox

While a sandbox is Running, an AI Chat thread exposes two live views into it:
  • Code: A full in-browser code editor connected directly to the sandbox’s filesystem, so you can inspect (or edit alongside the agent) the exact state of the code as the agent works.
  • File changes: A live diff view of every file the agent has created or modified via its Write/Edit tool calls, so you can review changes as they happen rather than waiting for a final summary.
Both panels require a running sandbox—they stay disabled while a sandbox is provisioning or has been torn down.

Getting your code out

A sandbox’s filesystem is disposable, so nothing in it persists past its lifecycle unless it’s committed out (see Inactivity timeout for what happens automatically):
  • In AI Chat, you can link the sandbox’s local repository to a remote and commit and push the agent’s changes at any time—Revolte can also generate a commit message for you.
  • In Jira Workflow runs, the agent commits its changes and opens a Pull Request against your connected repository automatically, so you review and merge through your normal Git workflow.

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