Open Agents

Open Agents is an open-source reference app from vercel-labs for building and running background coding agents on Vercel. It bundles the web UI, agent runtime, sandbox orchestration, and GitHub integration so a prompt can turn into code changes without a local machine involved. The repository is MIT licensed and is meant to be forked and adapted.

What It Is

Open Agents is a three-layer system: a web app, an agent workflow, and a sandbox VM. The web app handles auth, sessions, chat, and streaming UI. The agent runs as a durable workflow on Vercel, and the sandbox provides the filesystem, shell, git, dev servers, and preview ports.

The agent does not run inside the VM. It runs outside and works with the sandbox through tools such as file reads, edits, search, and shell commands. This lets agent execution outlive a single request, lets the sandbox hibernate and resume independently, and lets model and sandbox choices evolve separately.

How the Agent Workflow Operates

Chat requests start a workflow run rather than executing the agent inline. Each turn can continue across many persisted workflow steps, with streaming and cancellation. Active runs can be resumed by reconnecting to the stream. After a run, the workflow can record usage, refresh the diff cache, and optionally auto-commit, push, and open a pull request, depending on user preferences.

The agent has file, search, shell, task, skill, and web tools, and the homepage describes explorer and executor subagents for parallel work.

Sandboxes and Integrations

Each session runs in an isolated Vercel sandbox with its own branch, with snapshot-based resume and hibernation after inactivity. Sandboxes expose ports 3000, 5173, 4321, and 8000, and can start from an optional base snapshot. Sign-in uses Better Auth with Vercel OAuth, and a GitHub App provides repo access, pushes, and PRs. Optional extras include read-only session sharing links and ElevenLabs voice input.

Setup Path

You can deploy a copy on Vercel by forking the repo, setting POSTGRES_URL and BETTER_AUTH_SECRET, and adding Vercel OAuth and GitHub App credentials. Local setup uses pnpm with an env file under apps/web. The monorepo contains the Next.js web app, an agent package, a sandbox package, and shared utilities. It is built on AI SDK, AI Gateway, Sandbox, and Workflow SDK.