Concepts · 1 of 4
The environment is served, not assembled.
Traditional agent sandboxes boot an image and let each agent install its own tools. Celln keeps verified tool bytes on the host and maps them read-only into a short-lived cell. The cell owns almost nothing.
The inversion
| Typical sandbox | Celln |
|---|---|
| Agent receives a general-purpose image. | Cell receives a stripped substrate and specific tool pages. |
| Agent fetches and builds its environment. | Host verifies a tool once, then lends the same bytes. |
| Revocation means stopping or rebuilding machines. | Host can unmap a tool from a running cell. |
Five terms
Mote is the substrate at rest: a stripped kernel snapshot with pilot. A cell is a live, sealed mote with tools loaned in. Every cell is a sealed mote.
Assay is the host service that owns verified bytes, manifests and revocation. Warden is the per-cell VMM: one warden, one microVM, one cell. Pilot runs inside the cell and gates execution by content hash.
One cell lifecycle
- Assay resolves the declared tool bytes and their manifest.
- Warden forks a warm mote, seals it, and maps only those tool pages — one read-only mount per sealed image, at
/tools,/tools1, and so on. - Pilot verifies the requested executable and runs it in the appropriate lane.
- Authority only shrinks; once materialisation closes, it cannot reopen.
- The cell dissolves and its temporary workspace disappears.
That is the execution-plane seam Celln is designed to offer to a control plane such as Sympozium.