Show HN: Tilde.run – Agent sandbox with a transactional, versioned filesystem

Core Idea and Filesystem Design

• Service provides an agent sandbox whose filesystem is transactional and versioned, built on top of lakeFS.
• The repo is FUSE-mounted into the sandbox, not copied, so agents read/write “local” files that actually live in an object store (e.g., S3).
• Each sandbox run branches from a main repo, does work, and produces an atomic commit; rollbacks are done by reverting these snapshots.
• Versioning performance is proportional to number of objects changed, not size, since objects are immutable and operations are mostly metadata.

Why Not Just Git / S3 / Snapshots?

• Git is seen as fine for code but not for large binary or high-volume data (parquet, images, millions of small files).
• S3 versioning is per-object and awkward for understanding or reverting large directory-level changes.
• Traditional FS snapshots (e.g., btrfs) can solve persistence, but don’t provide built-in workflows like human-in-the-loop approvals or PR-style change review for agents.

Use Cases and Benefits

• Targeted at agents that need persistent state across runs (like a “computer with the same files” over time).
• Promises easier review, rollback, and audit of agent changes to files, including large datasets.
• Can host things like SQLite databases atop the FS to gain transactional rollback at the file level.

Security, Sandboxing, and External Effects

• Outbound network is controlled via a forward proxy with explicit allowlists (host/path/method).
• Many commenters note that versioning only protects the managed filesystem; external side effects (trades, DB schema drops, remote APIs, GitHub, S3, etc.) can’t be fully undone.
• Some argue sandboxing is overkill for most users if they already use Git, backups, and careful manual approvals; others liken sandboxing to seatbelts for when agents eventually “go off the rails.”

Product, UX, and Ecosystem Feedback

• Positive reactions to the versioned FS concept; several people building similar tools say this was a missing piece.
• Criticism of the landing page and demo as too vague, focusing on setup instead of compelling use cases.
• Questions about pricing (currently “free to start” with no concrete numbers), hosting details, OS support, and configurable resources (CPU, RAM, GPU).
• Some strongly prefer local, open-source sandboxes and are wary of SaaS lock-in; others see value in a hosted, managed solution even if similar primitives exist (OCI, k8s, FS snapshots, S3 Files, etc.).
• General sense that “agent sandboxes” are a crowded space, with comparisons to various open-source and commercial alternatives.