Skip to content

Document "This machine" local computer engine #3813

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Open
mintlify wants to merge 2 commits into
base: main
Choose a base branch
from
+26 −0
Open

Document "This machine" local computer engine #3813

Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
2 commits
Select commit Hold shift + click to select a range
a0f26d3
Update docs/inspector/computer.mdx
mintlify[bot] Aug 10, 2026
33945e7
Merge branch 'main' into mintlify/docs-update-pr-3812-1786323532738
github-actions[bot] Aug 10, 2026
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
26 changes: 26 additions & 0 deletions docs/inspector/computer.mdx
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -17,6 +17,32 @@ you close the terminal, and wakes on next use.
Open it from the **Computer** tab. The first time you open the terminal, MCPJam
provisions the machine; after that it resumes in about a second.

## "This machine" engine

In addition to the cloud computer, the Playground supports running the `bash` tool directly on the machine that runs this inspector — the **"This machine"** engine. When it is active, agent commands execute as your OS user account in a per-project workspace under `~/.mcpjam/computer/<project>/`, with no cloud sandbox involved.

### Consent

Before the local engine can be used, you must explicitly grant consent from the inspector. Consent is a device-scoped capability: it records that you — the person running this inspector — have allowed agents to execute commands on this machine. Granting consent from a second browser profile rotates the capability, and the previous profile is asked to re-consent.

Consent can be revoked at any time. After revocation, any turn that requests the local engine resolves as unavailable rather than silently falling back to the cloud.

### Approval

Every command that runs on the local engine requires your explicit approval before it executes, regardless of the host's tool-approval setting. There is no auto-approve for model-driven shell commands on your own machine.

### Engine label

Tool results from non-hosted turns include an `engine` field — `"local"` or `"cloud"` — so you can see at a glance where a command ran. Hosted inspector deployments omit this field to keep transcripts byte-identical to their existing format.

### What the local engine is not

The local workspace directory is a convenient default working directory, not a sandbox. Commands run with your full OS user permissions. The boundaries are consent, per-command approval, and the actor restrictions below — not filesystem paths.

### Who can use it

The local engine is available only to signed-in members running the inspector directly (not via a shared chatbox link, a guest session, a journey, or a swarm scope). Requests from those contexts always resolve to the cloud family.

## Chat attachments

When the previewed host has a computer attached and you are signed in, files you
Expand Down
Loading