E2B Sandboxes

Documentation from e2b-dev/e2b-convex, recorded October 23, 2026. APIs and setup may differ in the Bijection adaptation.

@e2b/convex

Persistent E2B sandboxes for Convex applications and AI agents.

@e2b/convex is a tableless Convex component with a small V8-compatible E2B client. It gives Convex actions sandbox lifecycle, commands, bounded file operations, preview hosts, Convex Agent tools, and plain AI SDK tools without shipping the full Node-oriented E2B SDK into the Convex runtime.

Pre-1.0: validate the package against your E2B template and network policy before production use.

Install

Copy codenpm install @e2b/convex
npx convex env set E2B_API_KEY e2b_your_key

Register the component and bind the secret in your Convex app:

Copy code// convex/convex.config.ts
import e2b from "@e2b/convex/convex.config.js";
import { defineApp } from "convex/server";
import { v } from "convex/values";

const app = defineApp({ env: { E2B_API_KEY: v.string() } });
app.use(e2b, { env: { E2B_API_KEY: app.env.E2B_API_KEY } });

export default app;

Run a command

Create the client in a Convex action and identify the sandbox with an application-owned scope and key:

Copy code// convex/sandbox.ts
import { E2B } from "@e2b/convex";
import { v } from "convex/values";
import { components } from "./_generated/api";
import { action } from "./_generated/server";

const sandboxes = new E2B(components.e2b, {
  template: "base",
  timeoutMs: 10 * 60_000,
});

export const run = action({
  args: { userId: v.string(), sessionId: v.string(), command: v.string() },
  handler: async (ctx, args) => {
    const identity = { scope: args.userId, key: args.sessionId };
    const sandbox = await sandboxes.getOrCreate(ctx, identity);

    return sandboxes.runCommand(ctx, {
      ...identity,
      sandboxId: sandbox.sandboxId,
      command: args.command,
    });
  },
});

Calls with the same scope and key reuse the same running or paused sandbox. Resolve it once before parallel work and pass sandboxId to subsequent operations.

Integrations

• Minimal API: lifecycle, shell commands, files, directories, and preview hosts.
• Convex Agent: createAgentTools(sandboxes, ...) from @e2b/convex/agent creates thread-aware tools with optional approval rules. Requires @convex-dev/agent and ai.
• AI SDK: createAiSdkTools(sandboxes, ctx, ...) from @e2b/convex/ai creates standard AI SDK tools inside any Convex action. Requires ai.

The core package has no runtime dependency on either; install them only for the integration you use.

Start with the getting-started guide, then use the copy-paste cookbook. The complete local app in example includes an xterm.js terminal and a realtime agent chat with visible tool calls.

Defaults and limits

• Sandboxes pause on timeout and are rediscovered through namespaced E2B metadata. Any operation on a paused sandbox resumes it, which restarts billing.
• Every operation resolves the sandbox first (getInfo + connect, or a metadata list when sandboxId is absent), adding roughly a second per call.
• Scope and key values are hashed before entering E2B metadata.
• Command output is bounded to 32 KiB per stream by default.
• Command output and individual file reads are capped at 1 MiB.
• File reads default to 64 KiB; writes are capped at 4 MiB.
• File tools are restricted to /home/user and /tmp unless configured otherwise.
• getHost is not exposed to an agent unless explicitly enabled.
• Every E2B request is tagged with e2b-convex/<version> for integration attribution.

See security, operations, and architecture before deploying an agent that executes untrusted instructions.

Status

The package uses E2B's public APIs and includes only the Process and Filesystem protocol descriptors required by the component. The pinned e2b package is a development-only protocol source. CI rejects Node built-ins or full-SDK imports in the emitted Convex runtime and a scheduled real-service test watches for protocol drift.

MIT