Isle

Isle provides managed desktop environments purpose-built for computer-use AI agents. Rather than handing agents a generic virtual machine, Isle wraps each supported application—currently KiCad and FreeCAD—in monitoring, containment, and checkpoint infrastructure so agents can complete real engineering work reliably. The service is accessed via a Python SDK and REST API, and is designed to work with any model or agent framework.

What It Is

Isle is an application-aware sandbox platform for computer-use agents. Where a generic cloud VM only tells you whether the machine is online, Isle monitors whether the target application itself is healthy, running, and on task. It exposes familiar computer-use primitives—screenshots, mouse, keyboard, and file transfer—alongside higher-level controls like artifact checkpoints, recovery, and application containment. The result is an environment that agents can use to do real desktop work without wandering into the operating system or losing progress to application crashes.

How the Application-Aware Layer Works

Isle's core differentiation is monitoring at the application layer, not just the machine layer. Key behaviors include:

• Application health checks verify the intended application (KiCad, FreeCAD) is open and responsive, not just that the VM is reachable.
• Artifact checkpoints let agents or orchestrators save a safe snapshot before risky operations, then restore it via sandbox.recover() if something goes wrong.
• Application containment blocks terminal, browser, package manager, and system-settings windows so agents stay inside the intended workflow.
• Persistent Python execution gives agents a stateful Python session on the desktop, with variables and imports surviving between cells, PyAutoGUI available, and results returned as structured observations.

Supported Environments

Isle currently ships two application environments:

• KiCad — schematic capture, PCB layout, and electronics design. Outputs KiCad-native files, Gerber, and BOM. New images include the official kipy IPC client for live PCB reads and edits.
• FreeCAD — parametric 3D modeling and engineering workflows. Supports STEP, IGES, STL, OBJ, and native FreeCAD formats. FreeCAD's freecadcmd interpreter is available inside execution cells.

The docs note that enterprise customers can request custom application environments.

SDK and API Design

The Python SDK (PyPI package isle-sdk, version 0.2.0 or later required for persistent execution) follows a straightforward lifecycle: create a sandbox, wait until ready, interact via screen/mouse/keyboard/file primitives, checkpoint progress, and stop or destroy the environment. Key SDK methods include sandboxes.create(), sandbox.execution.run(), sandbox.checkpoint(), sandbox.recover(), sandbox.stop(), and sandbox.resume(). A REST API is also documented for non-Python integrations. Individual file uploads and downloads are limited to 4 MiB; recordings are capped at 512 MiB or six hours.

Astra Integration

Isle's docs include a dedicated integration path for OpenAI's Astra model via the Responses API. The examples/astra/run.py script connects Astra to the same execution and observation tools available to any model, sending returned PNGs as image inputs and preserving tool call IDs. A companion validate.py script runs KiCad CLI ERC, DRC, and schematic parity checks on saved files. The docs note that bounded KiCad and FreeCAD tasks have been validated through Codex.

Update: Isle SDK 0.2.0

SDK version 0.2.0 introduced persistent Python execution (sandbox.execution.run(), submit(), get(), wait(), cancel()), structured desktop observations via sandbox.screen.observe(), the KiCad live PCB IPC API using kipy, and sandbox.capabilities() for runtime feature discovery. The docs specify that new environments are required to access these features, as existing environments retain their original image.