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Gerharddc
Litterbox
Rust2025–2026
Gerharddc / Litterbox

Litterbox

Somewhat Isolated Development Environments

4Distinct people
10Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
162GitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Somewhat Isolated Development Environments

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

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This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by month10 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2025-11-27 11:44:30 UTC to 2026-08-10 10:02:45 UTC.

01232025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 2 submissions, 0 commentsNov 20252025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 commentsMar 20262026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments2026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 commentsAug 2026

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
Nov 20252025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC220
Dec 20252025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jan 20262026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC303
Feb 20262026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC202
Mar 20262026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Apr 20262026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC101
May 20262026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC110
Jun 20262026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jul 20262026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Aug 20262026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-09-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

10 sources
Oh wow, this looks nicely done! It's also nice that it's cross platform. I've done something similar with https://github.com/Gerharddc/litterbox which takes things a bit further by allowing you to easily sandbox your entire development environment (i.e. IDE and everything) using containers. Unfortunately I have not gotten around to the network sandboxing part though, that seems very tricky to get useful without being too "annoying".
In Show HN: Zerobox – Sandbox any command with file, network, credential controls
Read the rest
In macOS's Little-Known Command-Line Sandboxing Tool (2025)
Great writeup! An alternative I have explored (more for defense against supply-chain attacks than for agents admittedly) is to use rootless Podman to get a dev-container-like experience alongside sandboxing. To this end I have built https://github.com/Gerharddc/litterbox (https://litterbox.work/) which greatly simplifies container setup and integrates a special ssh-agent for sandboxing that always prompts the user before signing requests (as to keep your SSH keys safe). Unfortunately Litterbox won't currently help much for specifically protecting .env files in a project folder though. I'd need to think if the design can be extended for this use-case now that I'm aware of the issue.
In Bubblewrap: A nimble way to prevent agents from accessing your .env files
Very interesting read, I had no idea agents already had so much sandboxing built in! It does seem like this is probably not enough though. A few months ago I built https://github.com/Gerharddc/litterbox (https://litterbox.work/) primarily to shield my home directory from supply-chain attacks, but I imagine it could be very useful for defending against rogue agents too. Essentially it is a dev-container-like system for Linux built on rootless Podman with a strong focus on isolation and security. A key difference to normal dev-containers is that it encourages placing your entire dev environment (i.e. also the editor etc.) inside the container so that you are even protected from exploits in editor extensions for instance. This also makes it safer to allow agents (or built tools) to for instance install packages on your system since this is n
Read the rest
ot the "real" system, it is only a container. Another important feature I added to Litterbox (and one I have not seen before) is a custom SSH agent which always prompts the user to confirm a signing operation through a pop-up. This means that things inside a Litterbox do not have unrestricted access to your normal SSH agent (something which could provide rogue actors access to your Github for instance).
In A deep dive on agent sandboxes
Very cool! I've recently built something similar at https://github.com/Gerharddc/litterbox (https://litterbox.work/). Litterbox only works on Linux as it heavily relies on Podman, but it does have a few other benefits for my use-case: - Most importantly, it exposes a Wayland socket so that I can run my entire dev environment (i.e. editor etc.) inside the container. This gives additional protection against exploits inside editor extensions for instance. - It also provides a special SSH agent which always prompts the user to confirm a signing operation. This means that an agent or an exploit never gets unsupervised access to your Github for instance. - It has some additional functions to help with enabling permissions inside the container which are only needed for certain use cases (such as allowing for TUN/TAP device creation). - It has no
Read the rest
t been added yet, but I'm working on SELinux integration for even more secure isolation from the host.
In Show HN: Yolobox – Run AI coding agents with full sudo without nuking home dir
Gerharddc·Nov 28, 2025Submission

Show HN: Litterbox – Defend Against Supply Chain Attacks

Are you worried about a supply chain attack (or even a rogue AI agent perhaps) compromising your entire development system? To minimise damage in such a scenario, I've built https://litterbox.work/ (https://github.com/Gerharddc/litterbox). Litterbox leverages Podman on Linux to create reproducible and somewhat isolated development environments (these environments are isolated from each other and from your host machine). These are similar to VSCode's DevContainers but take the concept a step further by putting the editor itself inside the container too. This helps to protect against exploits inside the editor (from rogue extensions perhaps) but more importantly, it eliminates the need for editor integration (i.e. the editor needs no knowledge of or support for Litterbox). Furthermore, Litterbox comes with a specialised SSH agent for exposi
Read the rest
ng SSH keys in a more secure way where each request to the agent needs to be approved in a pop-up dialog. This project is still in the very early stages with plenty of rough edges so any contributions or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
1 points · Open discussion
Gerharddc·Nov 27, 2025Submission

Show HN: Litterbox – Somewhat Isolated Development Environments

Have you ever worried about supply chain attacks (or even rogue AI agents) possibly compromising your entire development system? To minimise damage in such a scenario, I've built https://litterbox.work/ (https://github.com/Gerharddc/litterbox) as a way to have somewhat isolated Linux development environments without sacrificing too much convenience. It's still in the very early stages with plenty of rough edges so any contributions or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
2 points · Open discussion

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