PaperClipAI/packages/plugins/sandbox-providers/exe-dev

@paperclipai/plugin-exe-dev

Published exe.dev sandbox provider plugin for Paperclip.

This package lives in the Paperclip monorepo, but it is intentionally excluded from the root pnpm workspace and shaped to publish and install like a standalone npm package. That lets operators install it from the Plugins page by package name without introducing root lockfile churn.

Install

From a Paperclip instance, install:

@paperclipai/plugin-exe-dev

Configuration

Configure exe.dev from Instance Settings -> Environments, not from the plugin's plugin page.

• Put the exe.dev API token on the sandbox environment itself.
• When you save an environment, Paperclip stores pasted API keys and pasted SSH private keys as company secrets.
• EXE_API_KEY remains an optional host-level fallback when an environment omits the API token.
• The current implementation provisions VMs through exe.dev's HTTPS API and runs commands through direct SSH to the created VM.

To use the provider successfully, the environment/host needs all of the following:

• An exe.dev API token that allows the lifecycle commands the provider uses: new, ls, and rm, plus cp when sourceVm is set. exe.dev answers 403 for a command the token does not list. whoami and help are recommended for manual debugging. restart is only needed if you extend the provider to restart retained VMs.
• SSH access from the Paperclip host to the resulting *.exe.xyz VMs.
• An SSH private key that exe.dev already recognizes. You can either:
  • paste the private key into the environment config via sshPrivateKey
  • point sshIdentityFile at an absolute host path
  • or leave both blank and rely on the host's default SSH agent/keychain
• The matching public key must already be registered with exe.dev before the provider can execute commands inside the VM.

Operational notes:

• If exe.dev replies Please complete registration by running: ssh exe.dev, the host key has not finished exe.dev onboarding yet.
• Reusable leases keep the VM alive between runs. exe.dev does not expose a documented "stop and later resume" command in the public CLI docs, so reuseLease: true means "retain the VM" rather than "suspend it."
• The provisioning path uses https://exe.dev/exec, which exe.dev documents as a command-style HTTPS API with a 30-second request timeout. Typical new calls are expected to fit inside that limit; command execution itself does not use /exec.
• Probes still create and delete a real exe.dev VM through /exec, and so do the new/rm calls inside the normal acquire/release lifecycle. Treat all of those as real provisioning cost, not just probes.
• Set sourceVm ("Source VM" in the form) to the name of an existing exe.dev VM to copy it for each run with exe.dev cp, disk and config included, instead of creating a fresh VM with exe.dev new. This lets you prepare one VM with your toolchain and caches and start every run from it. cp accepts only the VM name, cpu, memory, and disk, so config validation rejects sourceVm together with image, command, comment, env, integrations, tags, setupScript, or prompt. The default setup script does not run either, so the source VM must already have Node 24.11+ and accept the configured SSH key. Do not keep secrets on the source VM: every copy inherits its disk. cp also goes through /exec, so a large disk copy must finish inside the same 30-second limit.
• exe.dev runs --setup-script as the unprivileged exedev user, not as root. That user has passwordless sudo, so any system-level steps in a custom setupScript must invoke sudo explicitly (for example sudo apt-get install -y …). When you omit setupScript, the plugin supplies a default that installs Node 24 via the official nodesource script — Paperclip's sandbox callback bridge is a Node program, so the VM needs node on PATH before the bridge can launch.

Local development

cd packages/plugins/sandbox-providers/exe-dev
pnpm install --ignore-workspace --no-lockfile
pnpm build
pnpm test
pnpm typecheck

These commands assume the repo root has already been installed once so the local @paperclipai/plugin-sdk workspace package is available to the compiler during development.

Package layout

• src/manifest.ts declares the sandbox-provider driver metadata
• src/plugin.ts implements the environment lifecycle hooks
• paperclipPlugin.manifest and paperclipPlugin.worker point the host at the built plugin entrypoints in dist/