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Add a provider-neutral Concepts page for sandboxes under fern/versions/latest/pages/about/concepts/ (e.g. concepts/sandboxes.mdx) that owns the why/what of sandboxes, distinct from the how-to/reference content in infrastructure/sandbox/.
Why now
Sandbox conceptual content is currently a single paragraph spread across about/concepts/environments.mdx (runtime vs sandbox definition) and about/concepts/evaluation.mdx (sandbox as state), with no single canonical home. With multiple providers now landing — OpenSandbox (in main), plus Daytona (#1513), ECS Fargate (#1645), and Apptainer (#1688) in flight under epic #1685 — there are now genuinely different isolation models to explain, which is the conceptual surface that justifies a dedicated page.
This complements the new how-to/reference guide added in PR #1717; that PR covers how to use the API, while this issue covers what sandboxes are and why.
Scope (provider-neutral)
runtime vs sandbox vs provider — clear three-way distinction (runtime = execution infra; sandbox = runtime with isolated execution; provider = the adapter onto a runtime/backend). Align vocabulary used by the infrastructure guide.
Isolation / security model — what "isolated execution" actually buys you and why it matters when agents run arbitrary code.
Lifecycle / state semantics — per-episode vs persistent sandboxes, TTL, snapshots.
Decision framing — "which kind of sandbox/provider for which situation" (local dev vs cluster vs cloud vs HPC), without duplicating per-provider setup docs.
Out of scope
Per-provider setup/config (lives in infrastructure/sandbox/<provider>.mdx).
Move/condense the runtime-vs-sandbox definition out of about/concepts/environments.mdx into the new page and leave a one-line pointer behind, so there is a single canonical source.
Cross-link: concept page <-> infrastructure/sandbox/ how-to, and link from evaluation.mdx.
Summary
Add a provider-neutral Concepts page for sandboxes under
fern/versions/latest/pages/about/concepts/(e.g.concepts/sandboxes.mdx) that owns the why/what of sandboxes, distinct from the how-to/reference content ininfrastructure/sandbox/.Why now
Sandbox conceptual content is currently a single paragraph spread across
about/concepts/environments.mdx(runtime vs sandbox definition) andabout/concepts/evaluation.mdx(sandbox as state), with no single canonical home. With multiple providers now landing — OpenSandbox (inmain), plus Daytona (#1513), ECS Fargate (#1645), and Apptainer (#1688) in flight under epic #1685 — there are now genuinely different isolation models to explain, which is the conceptual surface that justifies a dedicated page.This complements the new how-to/reference guide added in PR #1717; that PR covers how to use the API, while this issue covers what sandboxes are and why.
Scope (provider-neutral)
Out of scope
infrastructure/sandbox/<provider>.mdx).Implementation notes
about/concepts/environments.mdxinto the new page and leave a one-line pointer behind, so there is a single canonical source.infrastructure/sandbox/how-to, and link fromevaluation.mdx.Related