Agents need computers, not containers — introducing @cloudflare/computer

Cloudflare has unveiled @cloudflare/computer, an early preview package that provides each agent with an independent computer environment. Regardless of whether the code runs in an isolate, a container sandbox, or a web browser, the platform handles the execution details, optimizing for efficiency and scalability.

Previously, it was common to run agents inside containers, but recently a structure that separates the agent loop from the sandboxed code execution environment has been spreading. In this setup, the sandbox acts as the 'hands' that perform tasks, while the agent loop acts as the 'brain' that makes decisions.

Allocating a container to every agent makes it difficult to support hundreds of millions to billions of concurrent agents, because there aren't enough resources across clouds and hyperscalers to handle the demand for container-based CPU computing.

As an alternative, Cloudflare proposes isolates. Isolates can be created and terminated quickly, can be put into a sleep state when an agent is idle, can save their own state, and can spawn additional isolates to run untrusted code. Cloudflare explained that this kind of horizontally scalable compute primitive is better suited for scaling agents.