Spinup vs Sprites
Sprites' primitive is the persistent, hardware-isolated sandbox. Spinup is the agent runtime above the sandbox: one durable agent, one computer, any harness, with secrets and skills that follow the agent across harness changes and environment rebuilds. Every agent has an owner, a lifecycle, and a recorded run history, separate from any sandbox you've checkpointed. Both care about persistence and isolation. The difference is which layer the platform owns for you.
Common Ground
Where they overlap
Spinup and Sprites share core design values. The difference is how far up the stack each product takes responsibility.
Persistent environments
Both products treat persistence as a first-class concern. Agent state, files, and installed tools survive between runs. Neither treats the environment as disposable by default.
Isolation as a design value
Both invest in strong isolation boundaries. Sprites uses hardware-level isolation per sandbox. Spinup uses isolated environments per agent. The security boundary is non-negotiable for both.
Key Differences
Where they diverge
The products draw the platform boundary at different points. That decision shapes what you build yourself and what comes managed.
What the platform manages
Spinup manages the agent: a bundle of harness, skills, secrets, and environment. Sprites manages the sandbox: a persistent Linux machine. With Sprites, agent lifecycle, secrets, and harness selection are your team's responsibility. With Spinup, those are platform concerns.
Harness portability
In Spinup, you can swap the harness without rebuilding your setup. Switch from one agent framework to another, and secrets, skills, and the environment stay intact. Sprites lets you run any harness inside a sandbox, but the platform does not track which one is active or manage the switch.
Skills and secrets follow the agent
Spinup binds skills and secrets to the agent, not the environment. They follow the agent across harness changes and environment rebuilds. In Sprites, configuration lives at the sandbox level. Change your sandbox or harness, and you reconfigure from scratch.
Where the platform draws the line
Spinup provides audit logging, workspace-scoped secrets, and membership controls at the runtime layer. Sprites provides network egress filtering, storage policies, and checkpoint controls at the environment layer. Both offer controls, but at different levels of the stack.
Side-by-Side
Spinup vs Sprites comparison
| Spinup | Sprites | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary abstraction | The agent: harness, skills, secrets, environment | The sandbox: persistent Linux machine |
| Persistence model | Agent-scoped state that stays intact across harness changes | Sandbox-level storage up to 100 GB with checkpoint/resume |
| Harness management | Swappable harnesses per agent, managed by the platform | Run any harness inside the sandbox, managed by you |
| Skills and secrets | Bound to the agent, portable across harnesses and environments | Configured manually in the sandbox; reconfigure on changes |
| Persistence model | Per-agent persistent environment: files, packages, artifacts, and harness config carry between runs | Environment checkpoints for sandbox state |
| Isolation approach | Isolated environments per agent | Hardware-isolated Linux sandboxes |
| Workspace controls | Workspace membership, audit logging, secrets management | Network egress filtering and URL access controls |
| Best fit | Teams running multiple agents across harnesses with workspace-level controls | Teams wanting a persistent sandbox they manage directly |
Category Context
Runtime vs sandbox: where the platform boundary sits
Sprites is the closest product to Spinup in the market. Its mental model is clear: a persistent, sandboxed computer in the cloud. That simplicity is a real strength. If all you need is a long-lived Linux environment with strong isolation, Sprites delivers it without extra layers.
Spinup makes a different bet. It wraps the environment inside a managed agent object that carries its own harness, skills, secrets, and lifecycle. The sandbox is still there, but you interact with the agent, not the machine. The agent is the durable object. The machine is replaceable.
This matters when your team runs multiple agents, shares secrets across a workspace, needs configuration to survive a harness switch, or requires audit trails above the sandbox layer. At that point, the runtime layer removes integration work your team would otherwise build and maintain.
Sprites is a good product for teams that want a persistent sandbox and are comfortable owning agent lifecycle themselves. Spinup is for teams that want agent lifecycle, secrets, and harness management handled by the platform so they can focus on what the agent does.
Decision Guide
Which one fits your use case
Neither product is universally better. The right choice depends on how much agent infrastructure you want to build yourself.
Choose Spinup when you need harness portability
Your team runs multiple agents, may switch harnesses, and needs secrets and skills to stay intact through those changes. The runtime layer handles that portability so you do not build it.
Choose Spinup when you want workspace-level governance
You need workspace-scoped secrets, audit logging, and agent configuration that travels with the agent rather than living inside a specific sandbox.
Choose Sprites when you want a managed sandbox
You want a persistent Linux environment with hardware isolation, large storage, and checkpoint support. You are comfortable managing agent lifecycle, secrets, and harness selection yourself.
Choose Sprites when the sandbox is enough
You run a single harness and handle agent configuration in your own application code. The sandbox is the only platform primitive you need.
FAQ
Spinup vs Sprites questions
What is the main difference between Spinup and Sprites?+
Sprites gives you a persistent, hardware-isolated Linux machine you can checkpoint, resume, and attach storage to. Spinup gives you a managed agent that bundles a harness, skills, secrets, and an environment into a single runtime object. With Sprites, you manage agent lifecycle yourself inside the sandbox. With Spinup, the platform manages agent lifecycle for you, and the sandbox is an implementation detail.
Is Spinup a Sprites alternative?+
They solve related but different problems. If you want a persistent sandbox with strong isolation and you are comfortable managing agent lifecycle, secrets, and harness selection yourself, Sprites is a good product. If you want the platform to handle those concerns so your team focuses on what agents do rather than how they run, Spinup is built for that.
Can I migrate from Sprites to Spinup?+
Yes. If your agents already run in Sprites environments, the migration path is lifting agent configuration and secrets into the runtime layer. The underlying environment is similar in shape. The main change is that lifecycle management, secrets, and skills move from your application code into Spinup, where the platform manages them for you.
Do I need a control plane if I only use one harness?+
You can run a single harness and handle configuration yourself. The runtime layer pays for itself when you need to manage secrets at the workspace level, share skills across agents, swap harnesses without reconfiguring each environment, or enforce audit policies across a fleet. If you run one harness and handle all of that yourself, a persistent sandbox may be enough.
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