explaingit

run-llama/sandboxed-lit

Analysis updated 2026-05-18

83RustAudience · developerComplexity · 3/5Setup · moderate

TLDR

A Rust command-line tool that lets an AI agent answer questions about a folder of files while confined to an isolated sandboxed VM.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((sandboxed lit))
    What it does
      Sandboxed AI agent
      Reads folder of files
      Isolated VM
    Tech stack
      Rust
      microsandbox
      OpenAI GPT
    Use cases
      Summarize documents
      Extract data from PDFs
      Run analysis safely
    Audience
      Developers

Code map

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What do people build with it?

USE CASE 1

Have an AI summarize every document in a folder without risking the host machine.

USE CASE 2

Extract structured information from a batch of PDF files.

USE CASE 3

Ask an AI agent questions about a Word document without converting it first.

USE CASE 4

Run analysis scripts in an isolated sandbox instead of your main system.

What is it built with?

RustmicrosandboxOpenAI APILiteParse

How does it compare?

run-llama/sandboxed-litjohunsang/semble_rsazw413/glass
Stars838679
LanguageRustRustRust
Setup difficultymoderateeasymoderate
Complexity3/52/54/5
Audiencedeveloperdeveloperdeveloper

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you get it running?

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 30min

Requires an OpenAI API key and the microsandbox VM runtime.

In plain English

sandboxed-lit is a small command-line tool written in Rust that lets you point an AI agent at a folder of files and ask it questions about them, while keeping the agent confined to an isolated virtual machine so it cannot affect the rest of your system. The isolation comes from microsandbox, a lightweight VM technology. When you run sandboxed-lit, it creates or reattaches to a contained environment with limited CPU and memory, and mounts your chosen directory into that environment at a fixed path. The AI agent running inside can list files, read them, and execute shell commands, but only within that sandbox boundary. What makes it useful for document work is the file reader. Plain text files are returned as-is, but PDFs, images, and Office documents are routed through LiteParse, a separate tool from the same organization that extracts structured content from those formats. This means the agent can read a PDF or a Word document and reason about its contents without you having to convert it first. The agent itself uses OpenAI GPT models via a Rust SDK called agent-sdk. You give it a prompt on the command line and it runs until it has completed the task, streaming its progress to the terminal with colored output. Someone would use this to have an AI summarize documents in a folder, extract information from a batch of PDFs, or run analysis scripts in a safe environment. The tech stack is Rust with an OpenAI API key required.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Run sandboxed-lit on this folder of PDFs and summarize what each one contains.
Prompt 2
Ask the sandboxed agent to extract all invoice totals from these documents.
Prompt 3
Explain how microsandbox isolates this tool from the rest of my system.
Prompt 4
Set up sandboxed-lit with my OpenAI API key and point it at my downloads folder.

Frequently asked questions

What is sandboxed-lit?

A Rust command-line tool that lets an AI agent answer questions about a folder of files while confined to an isolated sandboxed VM.

What language is sandboxed-lit written in?

Mainly Rust. The stack also includes Rust, microsandbox, OpenAI API.

How hard is sandboxed-lit to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated moderate, with roughly 30min to a first successful run.

Who is sandboxed-lit for?

Mainly developer.

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