Ironclaw

Self-hosted AI agents you do not have to trust.

Each one runs sealed in a sandbox that provably cannot phone home, read your host, or rewrite its own rules.

IronClaw runs autonomous AI agents on infrastructure you control, reached through the chat apps you already use. Each agent can read, write, schedule, and reply like any assistant, but it lives inside a sealed sandbox with network=none: it reaches the model only through a host proxy, and it cannot change its own configuration. It is for anyone who wants what agents can do without handing an autonomous program the keys to their machine.

Now on the GitHub Marketplace. The ironctl scan containment grader ships as a

GitHub Action: drop one

line into a workflow and every pull request gets a 0 to 100 sandbox isolation scorecard as

a sticky comment. Local, read-only, credential-free.

`yaml

# .github/workflows/scan.yml

- uses: IronSecCo/ironclaw@v1

with:

target: my-container # a container, compose service, or k8s manifest

`

Report-only by default; set min-score: 90 to gate merges. See scan in CI.

Watch it catch a real escape. A fully-jailbroken agent inside a real sandbox tries to phone home, read the host filesystem, and seize the host through the Docker socket. Each attempt is denied at the isolation boundary, then a containment summary prints. One command, zero credentials, reduced-motion friendly. examples/live-containment/run.sh

⭐ Like the idea of agents you do not have to trust? [Star the repo](https://github.com/IronSecCo/ironclaw) so it is one click to follow along and easier for the next person to find. Then run the exact demo above in 30 seconds, no signup and no API key.

Try it in 30 seconds (zero credentials)

Make sure the Docker daemon is running (start Docker Desktop, or sudo systemctl start docker on Linux), then paste one block:

git clone https://github.com/IronSecCo/ironclaw.git && cd ironclaw

examples/live-containment/run.sh # builds the sandbox once, engages a real sandbox, proves it holds

That single command runs the whole secured path on your laptop: it starts the offline mock-agent control-plane (no API key), engages a real per-session sandbox, lets a jailbroken agent try to break out, and prints the containment summary you saw above. Want to chat with an agent in a browser first? Run hello-ironclaw or the zero-credential quickstart. Production seals each sandbox with gVisor and network=none.

[!WARNING]

Alpha software, work in progress. Please read before relying on it.

- It's an alpha. Flags, the on-disk format, and the HTTP/contract surfaces can still change without notice or a migration path. Don't point it at anything you can't afford to lose.

- Not every feature is tested end-to-end. The control-plane, gateway, and encrypted-queue core have real coverage (800+ Go tests plus a black-box parity suite); channel adapters, some tools, multi-provider routing, and a live sandbox launch are exercised more lightly. Treat anything outside the tested core as experimental.

macOS gets a weaker sandbox boundary than Linux+gVisor, and native Windows can't run the agent sandbox at all (use WSL2). See Platform support.

The security model, in one line: each sandboxed agent runs with network=none, reaches the

model only through a host proxy, and cannot change its own configuration. Every capability

change is held at a gateway for a human decision. The full design is in the

architecture overview and the threat model.

See the whole journey, end to end

Zero credentials, one command. The offline mock-agent runs the full chat to per-session sandbox to reply path with no API key. Production seals each sandbox with gVisor and network=none . Quickstart

Zero-cred demo, connect a real provider, first approved task. The one credential step keeps the key host-side; every agent change is held at the gateway for a human, then written to the append-only audit log. Animation freezes on the final frame under prefers-reduced-motion . Quickstart

Get running in under two minutes

One command installs the two host binaries (ironctl + ironclaw-controlplane); in dev mode the control-plane serves its API at `http://127.0.0.1:8787`. From a cold machine, you'll have a capability change waiting at the security gateway in under two minutes:

# 1. Install — detects your OS/arch and verifies the SHA-256 checksum before installing

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/IronSecCo/ironclaw/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

2. Start the control-plane in dev mode — API base URL: http://127.0.0.1:8787

export IRONCLAW_API_TOKEN=$(openssl rand -hex 32) ironclaw-controlplane --dev --api-addr 127.0.0.1:8787 &

3. Your first command — submit a change; it is HELD at the gateway for a human decision

ironctl change submit --kind persona --group dev-agent --by you ironctl change pending # see it waiting ironctl change approve --by you # apply it

On Windows, irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/IronSecCo/ironclaw/main/scripts/install.ps1 | iex installs the host binaries (ironclaw-controlplane.exe + ironctl.exe) and --dev runs, but the agent sandbox needs WSL2 or Linux — see Windows via WSL2. Version pinning, system-wide installs, and building from source are all in Installation.

One-click cloud deploy

Run the hardened control-plane on a PaaS in ~2 minutes with zero local tooling — the approval gateway, encrypted per-session queues, host-side credential custody, and the web console:

These PaaS paths run the control-plane only — a single container has no gVisor and

no Docker socket, so agent sandboxes don't launch there (same boundary as the

hardened Compose path). For full agent isolation use

a gVisor host or k8s node. Details + env in the

deployment guide (Path D).

CLI-first and API-first

This is a feature, not a missing dashboard. Every capability is a documented HTTP endpoint and an ironctl subcommand, so IronClaw is scriptable, auditable, and CI-frien