Cloudflare Computer

Cloudflare Computer is an open-source TypeScript library published by Cloudflare that gives AI agents a durable, SQLite-backed virtual filesystem running inside a Durable Object. It is currently in preview — suitable for experiments and prototypes but not yet recommended for production use. The project was created in June 2026 and has accumulated over 450 GitHub stars as of early August 2026.

What It Is

Cloudflare Computer provides a Workspace abstraction: a virtual filesystem whose authoritative state lives in SQLite inside a Cloudflare Durable Object. On top of that filesystem, it exposes a single pluggable execution surface — workspace.runtime — that can be backed by one of three runtime backends. The result is a self-contained "computer" that an agent can read from, write to, and execute code on, all within Cloudflare's edge infrastructure.

Three Execution Backends

The library ships three backends that can be registered under stable IDs on the same Workspace:

• Container — projects the SQLite state into a sandbox container as a real FUSE mount via a computerd daemon. Changes sync back over a capnweb RPC channel. Provides a full Linux userland with real binaries and real network access.
• Isolate shell — runs just-bash in a Dynamic Worker. It reaches the authoritative Workspace over Workers RPC with no second store or sync round trip.
• Isolate JavaScript — evaluates an ECMAScript module in a fresh Dynamic Worker with structured input/results, durable relative imports, configured libraries, Workspace-backed node:fs/promises, and trusted ws:git and ws:artifacts modules.

workspace.runtime.exec(source, { backend }) is the single entry point; the selected backend determines whether source is a shell command or an ECMAScript module. Backends connect lazily on first use, and a Workspace can also be constructed without any backend to use the filesystem alone.

Repository Architecture

The repo is a monorepo of focused packages:

• @cloudflare/dofs — the Durable Object SQLite-backed virtual filesystem, sync protocol building blocks, and a @platformatic/vfs provider for Node.
• @cloudflare/computer-rpc — capnweb wire types and server/client helpers shared between the Durable Object and computerd.
• @cloudflare/computerd — the computerd daemon: a FUSE mount plus HTTP/WebSocket RPC server that runs inside the sandbox container.
• @cloudflare/computer — the top-level package consumed by Durable Objects.
• @cloudflare/computer-computerd-linux-x64 — the prebuilt computerd binary for linux-x64, distributed for use in container images.

Performance Characteristics

According to the project's own benchmarks in docs/19_performance.md, computerd's FUSE mount beats real disk on metadata-heavy workloads and trails it on large sequential I/O. The docs include fs-bench numbers and a cloudflare/sandbox-sdk npm install comparison with reproduction steps.

Runnable Examples

The examples/ directory ships several end-to-end consumers of the public surface:

• container and worker-shell — identical HTTP write/read/exec surfaces, one using a container and one using just-bash in a Dynamic Worker.
• worker-javascript — same HTTP surface but exec evaluates an ECMAScript module.
• think — a @cloudflare/think chat agent that uses the workspace as its working directory, reachable from a terminal.
• think-compare-runtimes — a web UI that runs the same agent task against container and worker runtimes side by side.
• tutorial — a step-by-step build that writes a markdown recipe card and runs pandoc in a container to produce a PDF.
• artifacts — generates a Worker project in a workspace and publishes it to Cloudflare Artifacts.
• assets — turns a prompt into an image with Workers AI, writes it to the workspace, and returns a shareable link.

Current Status: Preview

The README explicitly marks the package as PREVIEW ONLY — APIs are unstable and the design is subject to change. The docs/ specification is described as forward-looking intent rather than a description of the current code. The project is MIT-licensed and open source under Cloudflare's GitHub organization.