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Show HN: Agent6 – coding agent with jailed commands and editable state machines

Agent6, a new coding agent that jails model commands and uses editable state machines for long-running tasks, has been released. The agent restricts filesystem and network access via Landlock and seccomp, supports multiple AI providers including Anthropic and OpenAI-compatible endpoints, and offers features such as per-step commits, budget caps, and parallel fan-out. It is available for installation via uv or pipx, requires Python 3.12+, and runs on Linux with sandbox support.

read4 min views1 publishedAug 16, 2026
Show HN: Agent6 – coding agent with jailed commands and editable state machines
Image: Michielbdejong (auto-discovered)

A coding agent that jails model commands and uses editable state machines for long-running tasks.

The model can write code and ask to run commands, but those commands go through a jail with restricted filesystem and network access. Long-running workflows can be written, reviewed, edited, resumed, and replayed as declarative state machines instead of being left to an open-ended agent loop.

Full documentation: agent6.dev

| the TUIthe full agent, as a live dashboard |

the full agent, in any terminalthe CLI the full agent, in any terminal

the full agent, desktop or phonethe web UI the full agent, desktop or phone

Jailed commands: Landlock + seccomp, and understrict

(what the defaultauto

picks when the host allows it) user namespaces,pivot_root

, read-only.git

, no route off the box (Security)Providers: Anthropic and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint (OpenAI, OpenRouter, Ollama, vLLM, llama.cpp, LM Studio); model + thinking level per role (Config)Clean checkout: per-step commits on a detached ref,sessions merge

to land them, snapshot resume, fork at any turnVerify gate: inferred when unset, pinned for the run, green/red on every surface; a worker can propose a replacement gate instead of revertingBudget: hardmax_usd

cap, token cap for calls the provider does not priceSessions: run, plan, ask (plan and ask never edit);--from <id>

seeds from another, cross-session reads,/btw

asks beside a live runFour front-ends, one engine: CLI, TUI,browser(stdlib server, no JS deps, phone), andeditor over ACP;attach

,exec

,forward

,history

Background commands:background: true

hands back a handle,read_background

polls,/shells

lists them; none outlive the runContext control: compaction visible on every surface,/compact [focus]

,/pin

, repo memory injected per runState machines: LLM-drafted, operator-reviewed, journaled, replayable; they for input, take events, steer from any front-end (State machines)Task graph: the worker keeps its plan in a persistent DAG (dependencies, acceptance criteria, statuses) journaled with the run; it survives crash and compaction restarts, shows live on every surface, anddecompose = "auto"

front-loads it for models measured to need itCode review:agent6 review

on any diff, plus an in-loop panel of adversarial reviewers where only blocking-category findings gateParallel fan-out:--parallel N|model-a,model-b

clone-based lanes, auto-compared into a ranked report;sessions compare

for past runs,/parallel

mid-run (Architecture)Skills: SKILL.md packs (the format Claude Code and most agents share) index into the prompt, load on demand, fire as/name

or--skill

; repo instructions fromAGENTS.md

Fixed tool surface: extended only by operator-configured MCP servers, off by default, jailed by default** Eight runtime dependencies**, no telemetry, no auto-update

uv tool install agent6        # or: pipx install agent6

If agent6

is not found, you can add the uv or pipx bin dir (~/.local/bin

) to your PATH with uv tool update-shell

or pipx ensurepath

.

Enable shell completion with agent6 completions

(supports bash, zsh, fish, and xonsh).

agent6 requires Python 3.12+ and the sandbox only supports Linux (x86_64/aarch64). Other platforms run without the sandbox behind a warning. See installation for the full requirements and building from source.

agent6 connect                # interactive: pick provider, paste API key
agent6 model worker anthropic claude-sonnet-5

cd your-repo
agent6 run "add a --json output mode to the CLI"
agent6 plan "how to add a --json output mode to the CLI"
agent6 ask "how to add a --json output mode to the CLI"

agent6 attach <session-id>    # follow + answer a run live (--raw for events)
agent6 tui                    # full-screen dashboard hub
agent6 web                    # browser UI on http://127.0.0.1:7658
agent6 acp                    # speak ACP on stdio; an editor spawns this

agent6 config show
agent6 check
agent6 resume <session-id>
agent6 fork <session-id> --at-turn 7

See usage for the full command tour, the web UI for driving runs from a phone, configuration for every field, and the security model for what the sandbox enforces.

Config is layered, lowest precedence first: built-in defaults, the global ~/.config/agent6/config.toml

, the per-repo config (in the state dir, out of the workspace, per-machine, never committed), then --config FILE

. agent6 config show

prints every effective value with the layer that set it. Every field has a default, and security-sensitive fields default to the safe value: isolation = "auto"

, network = "auto"

, run_commands = "ask"

, protect_git = true

. Under "auto"

the sandbox picks the most secure option available on the host and warns if it cannot enforce the full policy; an explicitly set value it cannot enforce refuses to run. protect_git = true

re-binds .git

read-only, which needs strict

; on hardened

the default warns and an explicitly set true

refuses to run. agent6 itself does not push, rewrite history, or reset --hard

, and no config key can enable them.

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