--- title: DigitalOcean Harness Runtime (public) description: Run AI coding agents in isolated DigitalOcean sandboxes with session lifecycle, permissions, and a YAML environment spec. product: Managed Agents url: https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/ last_updated: "2026-09-22" --- > **For AI agents:** The documentation index is at [https://docs.digitalocean.com/llms.txt](https://docs.digitalocean.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of pages use the same URL with `index.html.md` in place of the HTML page (for example, append `index.html.md` to the directory path instead of opening the HTML document). # DigitalOcean Harness Runtime (public) Generated on 9 Oct 2026 DigitalOcean Harness Runtime provides managed, hardware-isolated microVM sandboxes with built-in tools such as Chromium to run harnesses and execute arbitrary code. Rich lifecycle APIs preserve conversational history and working state across sessions, letting you pause, resume, and fork work to control costs and adapt to the nonlinear nature of agentic workflows. Scale complete agents such as Claude Code or use sandboxes independently for code execution, all through the same service. See [What You Can Build](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/details/what-you-can-build/index.html.md) for example use cases. Most Viewed Harness Runtime Articles 01. [Create DigitalOcean Harness Runtime Environments](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/how-to/create-harness-agents/ "Define an environment, save it as a reusable config, build a custom sandbox image, and set what the agent is allowed to do.") 02. [What You Can Build](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/details/what-you-can-build/ "Use cases for Managed Agents, including Harness Runtime and Action Gateway.") 03. [DigitalOcean Harness Runtime Pricing](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/details/pricing/ "Billing components for Harness Runtime compute, storage, tools, and inference, and the Agent Droplets plans that discount them.") 04. [DigitalOcean Harness Runtime Overview](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/concepts/overview/ "Harness Runtime provides managed microVM sandboxes to run agent harnesses and execute code, with session lifecycle controls, Workspace, connections, and optional Action Gateway tools.") 05. [How to Run a Hermes Agent on DigitalOcean Harness Runtime](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/how-to/run-hermes-agent/ "Run the Hermes gateway as a long-lived agent inside a Harness Runtime sandbox and reach its admin dashboard from your machine.") 06. [Agent Adapters](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/concepts/agent-adapters/ "Harness Runtime adapters select which coding agent or framework runs in the sandbox and which platform features, such as approvals and checkpoints, apply to the session.") 07. [DigitalOcean Harness Runtime Quickstart](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/quickstart/ "Start a Codex CLI agent in an isolated DigitalOcean sandbox with a single doctl command.") 08. [How to Manage DigitalOcean Harness Runtime Sessions](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/how-to/manage-sessions/ "List, show, pause, resume, attach, detach, log, and remove Harness Runtime sessions with doctl harness-runtime or the Control Panel.") 09. [Environment Spec Reference](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/reference/environment-spec/ "Field reference for the YAML environment specification, covering the adapter, sandbox, credentials, egress, tools, skills, and permission fields.") 10. [DigitalOcean Harness Runtime Limits](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/details/limits/ "Session, compute, file transfer, and networking limits for Harness Runtime.") [Quickstart](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/quickstart/index.html.md): Start a Codex CLI agent in an isolated DigitalOcean sandbox with a single doctl command. [Examples](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/examples/index.html.md): Worked examples of Harness Runtime, each with a complete environment spec and the commands to run it, covering coding, marketing, document review, incident response, and multi-tenant agent products. [How-Tos](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/how-to/index.html.md): Task-focused guides for deploying agents, managing sessions, permissions, files, and tools. [Reference](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/reference/index.html.md): Environment spec reference and links to doctl resources for Harness Runtime. [Concepts](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/concepts/index.html.md): Explanations of Harness Runtime environments, sandboxes, sessions, runs, adapters, permissions, approvals, secrets, and network egress. [Details](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/details/index.html.md): Use cases, features, pricing, availability, limits, and data privacy for Harness Runtime. ## Latest Updates ### 6 October 2026 - [DigitalOcean Harness Runtime](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/index.html.md) now supports CrewAI agents. Package a CrewAI repository, declare kickoff inputs, connect a model and Action Gateway tools, and deploy your crew in an isolated sandbox. For more information, see [How to Run a CrewAI Agent on DigitalOcean Harness Runtime](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/how-to/run-crewai-agent/index.html.md). - Harness Runtime Bring-Your-Own-Template (BYOT) registration now requires a recommended base template (`codex-base`, `opencode-base`, `claude-code-base`, `hermes-base`, or `langgraph-base`). Recommended bases provide stronger isolation for custom templates than previously supported bases (`coding-codex`, `coding-opencode`, `coding-claude-code`, `coding-hermes`, and `langgraph`). The legacy bases remain available for existing custom templates and for rebuilds of those templates. Support for them in BYOT will be removed in a future release. Sessions that use the legacy base templates as adapter default templates continue to work as usual. For more information, see [How to Use a Custom Sandbox Template (BYOT)](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/how-to/use-custom-template/index.html.md). ### 21 September 2026 - [Managed Agents](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/index.html.md) is now available in [public preview](https://docs.digitalocean.com/platform/product-lifecycle/index.html.md#public-preview) for all users. Managed Agents is a set of services that gives every agent its own microVM execution environment and governed tool access so that developers can scale agentic work without having to build and maintain infrastructure themselves. Developers can pick from agent harnesses that they already use (like Claude Code or agents built with frameworks like LangGraph and Hermes), securely connect it to more than 16,000 tools and have their agents do meaningful work in seconds, from the Control Panel or the DigitalOcean CLI. Teams can also register custom OCI images as sandbox templates with Bring-Your-Own-Template (BYOT). [DigitalOcean Harness Runtime](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/index.html.md) combines the functionality of a lightweight microVM, built-in tools like chromium and a coding sandbox needed by agents to do work. The product also offers rich lifecycle APIs that persist conversational history and working state across sessions, along with pause/resume/fork semantics so that developers can control costs and adapt workflows to the nonlinear quirks of agentic work. [Action Gateway](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/action-gateway/index.html.md) gives agents governed access to 16,000+ tools through a single managed MCP endpoint. This includes DigitalOcean-maintained tools such as Web Search, Web Fetch, Browser Automation, and DigitalOcean infrastructure management APIs, along with connectors for platforms like GitHub, HubSpot, Stripe, Snowflake, and more. Teams can also extend the catalog with their own MCP servers and internal tools. For more information, see [all Harness Runtime release notes](https://docs.digitalocean.com/release-notes/agent-harness-runtime/index.html.md).