AI agents can be given a goal, write code, use tools, and keep working as new information becomes available. This opens the door to applications that investigate software failures, run experiments, and carry out business-critical actions and research over days or weeks.

Useful agents need access to workspaces, compute resources, data, credentials, and external services. But broader access also creates more consequential failure modes, from changing production data or exposing confidential information to acting beyond the assigned task.

NVIDIA OpenShell 0.1.0 is an open-source runtime for defining and enforcing which systems and data an agent can access. It combines sandboxed execution, controlled service access, credential management, and formal policy analysis.…