Thread

Cloudflare OS: an open platform for agents, apps, and work

641 points · 315 comments · speckx

rozenmd · 1785939425 · focus · HN ↗
I liked Kenton's take on this: <a href="https://x.com/KentonVarda/status/2084990137180590572?s=20" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/KentonVarda/status/2084990137180590572?s=20
Text from tweet:
Today we are releasing Cloudflare OS, a chatbot with connectors, just like every other tech company is doing.
Except actually, it's different. This is a remake of Sandstorm[.]io, my startup from 10 years ago, except this time built on Cloudflare Workers (the platform I've spent the last 9 years building) and deeply leveraging AI. This is more or less the culmination of my secret 10-year master plan.
This is a full-on personal app vibe coding platform, in which the sandbox is so secure that you can pretty much go wild -- the AI cannot introduce a significant security bug. We believe a company's security team can feel comfortable giving non-technical users permission to vibe code and then sleep soundly at night.
How is that possible? It's the Sandstorm security model, revisited. A "Gadget" is the same thing as a Sandstorm "Grain": a fine-grained app instance. For example, if you have a document editor app, each document runs as a separate instance of the app, in a separate sandbox (one "Gadget").
This means two things, both of which I think are Big Deals: 1. The platform can manage all access control, by controlling who can access the Gadget at all. There is no way the Gadget can accidentally leak itself to an attacker -- even an attacker who has access to other Gadgets based on the same app. 2. Since everyone is running their own copy of the code, everyone can freely modify their copy of the code.
Think about #2 a bit more.
What if, when you wanted a new feature in the software you are using, you could just prompt your agent to add it?
This doesn't work in the cloud Software-as-a-Service model, because you are not running your own copy of the app.
Sandstorm tried to change that 10 years ago, but the world wasn't ready, because not enough people had the skills or patience to actually modify their software. AI has changed that. Now you just ask the agent -- the same agent that you are using to help you interact with the Gadget can also modify the code of the Gadget.
And it is so fun.
1. tinco · 1785942986 · focus · HN ↗
  This is really interesting. I built a similar product (not released yet), but it uses Kubernetes as the infrastructure layer instead of Cloudflare OS. I guess all these years later I am left with the same existential question that plagued Sandstorm. What is its relevance in the context of Linux containers? This is not a rhetorical question, is there a real benefit for a Sandstorm grain over a docker style Linux container? Does a containerized process not have all the same benefits of a Sandstorm grain, with the added benefit of not requiring any modifications of the containerized software?
  One argument I could bring is that despite all its claims, OpenAI still had to switch from containers to MicroVMs because its agents under test still managed to break out from their containers. Is the security model of a Sandstorm grain so much better that agents wouldn't figure out how to break out of it?
  1. kentonv · 1785943178 · focus · HN ↗
    Sandstorm's use of containers was just a means to an end. The real innovation was the fine-grained instances -- each document in its own container. No other container platform did that.
    But honestly, it didn't work well, because of cold start times and memory usage. It's bad enough when a server takes seconds to start, but if every document you open has a long startup time and uses hundreds of MB of RAM, it's really painful.
    Cloudflare OS doesn't use containers. It uses Dynamic Workers, which are 100x more efficient: <a href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/dynamic-workers/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.cloudflare.com/dynamic-workers/
    So the stuff I have been building in Workers for the past 9 years turns out to be the thing that Sandstorm needed all along. What a coincidence. :)
    echelon · 1785945285 · focus · HN ↗
    This is far too Cloudflare flavored to be interesting to me.
    It's using Workers (capital W) and the core Cloudflare primitives.
    I don't feel safe building on this or touching this.
    I'd be happier if a startup or neutral party built this in a more agnostic way.
    kentonv · 1785945604 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm sorry but Workers is the technology that makes this all possible. I don't think I could have built this without Workers as a foundation. (I tried once, with Sandstorm, and like I said, it didn't work well.)
    Sometimes you just can't advance the state of the art while also maintaining broad compatibility.
    It's all open source, though. You can run the whole stack on your own machine.
    ocdtrekkie · 1785946411 · focus · HN ↗
    For what it's worth, we also ran workerd inside a Sandstorm grain and not only did it work, it performed well. In the same way some people run Docker to run a single thing inside a VM solely for that thing... you can probably use workerd just to run a single Workers-based thing inside something else... and it'll probably work just swell.
    echelon · 1785947423 · focus · HN ↗
    Workers is a product and you're paid to develop and sell it as an employee.
    I 100% understand the hustle. I do the same thing. I just don't trust a giant like Cloudflare that has done several things to weaken the open web and establish a position that is all too powerful. I don't want to give them an iota of support. Even using open source buys into their mindshare, distribution, ecosystem, and eventual supremacy and lock-in.
    I'd buy this from a smaller company for sure. Just not from Google, AWS, Cloudflare.
    If this was a YC startup I'd have given you my credit card info already.
    I don't know what your stock in Cloudflare is like, but your upside would be way bigger building this externally. You'd probably raise an extremely large seed round.
    Consider launching your own startup. Don't give Cloudflare all the upside.
    Edit: I didn't realize you'd already responded. Was clarifying my position and wishes for this to not be something made by Cloudflare.
    [deleted] · 1785947478 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    kentonv · 1785949322 · focus · HN ↗
    I tried it as a startup once, so I know what that's like. It's a lot of time spent running around begging for money (from investors and from customers) rather than building technology.
    Workers is my startup-within-Cloudflare. It won't make me a billionaire, but it has still made me more money than I actually know what to do with, while being able to delegate all the stuff I don't like doing to other parts of the company that already do it quite well.
    I have a lot of influence here. The CEO and CTO listen to me. E.g. I made my argument this all needed to be open source and self hostable, and they agreed enthusiastically.
    I don't think I could build this better as a separate company.
    echelon · 1785949674 · focus · HN ↗
    I appreciate your extremely thoughtful answers. It greatly improves my perception and attitude about this.
    I'll check it out.
    I'm still anxious about the Cloudflare angle (and that's hard to shake), but beggars can't be choosers. You've legitimately built something cool and done a fantastic job spearheading that.
    Thank you for the kind and well stated response. Sounds like you've had a lot of fun building this too.
    fragmede · 1785964921 · focus · HN ↗
    Congratulations on making it, yet continuing the grind! Work takes on a different meaning when you could just fuck off to the beach for the rest of your life. Thank you for making it open source, not that I'd make a Cloudflare competitor with it, but the sandbox technology will be useful.
    teacpde · 1786000068 · focus · HN ↗
    Love the wisdom and transparency, such an amazing thread
    sroerick · 1785946994 · focus · HN ↗
    My approach has been an interpreted Lisp running on a web server backend and it basically does everything described here
    zqm-sh · 1785993425 · focus · HN ↗
    We're going to prove it's hostable outside Cloudflare, if you're interested in the tech but want an (experimental) "neutral" hosting option - email us hello@zqm.sh if you have questions/feedback.
    <a href="https://zqm.sh/" rel="nofollow">https://zqm.sh/

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