How It Works

When the work needs a full Linux toolchain, real processes, or code you wouldn’t run on your own machine, use a remote sandbox: a machine run by a provider. File tools act on its disk and bash runs on it, and nothing runs on your machine.

Driver	Provider
`daytona`	Daytona
`vercel`	Vercel Sandbox

Both drivers are built into the CLI, with nothing to add to your settings. Their SDKs are optional dependencies of @codeworksh/cli. If your package manager skipped optional dependencies, the driver can’t start.

Credentials

CodeWork reads credentials from the environment of the process that creates the sandbox: your shell for codework run, or the server for codework serve.

Daytona

export DAYTONA_API_KEY="..."

Variable	Description
`DAYTONA_API_KEY`	API key from your dashboard
`DAYTONA_API_URL`	Optional. A non-default API URL
`DAYTONA_TARGET`	Optional. A non-default region

Vercel

export VERCEL_OIDC_TOKEN="..."

The token identifies your team and project. See Vercel’s OIDC docs to get one for a linked project.

New Sandboxes

CodeWork creates a sandbox with the provider’s defaults. The session starts in its working directory, or in --cwd:

Driver	Default working directory
`daytona`	Its work dir, or `/home/daytona`
`vercel`	Its working dir, or `/vercel/sandbox`

A new sandbox is empty. CodeWork doesn’t upload your files, so have the agent clone the repository, or attach a sandbox you’ve set up.

Created sandboxes are labeled codework-managed and codework-instance (tags on Vercel), so you can find them in the provider’s dashboard. codework run --server prints the sandbox ID on a sandbox-id: line.

Attach Your Own

With --sandbox-provider-id, pass the sandbox ID for Daytona or the sandbox name for Vercel:

codework run --sandbox-driver vercel --sandbox-provider-id <sandbox-name> "Continue the migration"

Attaching the same ID again reuses CodeWork’s record of it.

Stopping and Deleting

Stopping isn’t deleting. A stopped sandbox starts again when a session mounts it. The RPC server also stops one on sandbox.stop.

CodeWork creates, reuses, and stops sandboxes, but never deletes provider infrastructure. Daytona sandboxes are created with auto-delete off, so clean them up from the provider’s dashboard or CLI.

Interrupting a turn cancels a running command on Vercel. On Daytona, the command may keep running.

Remote