feat(tasks): add isolated cloud computer use

[richardsolomou]

Problem

Cloud task agents need a computer they can control without reaching back into the user's local machine. Each opted-in run should get an isolated desktop without weakening browser or network isolation.

Changes

• Add a computer_use run option and carry it through task state into agent-server startup.
• Run opted-in tasks cold on the real-kernel VM runtime so WebKit keeps its process sandbox enabled.
• Start the Xvfb/Openbox desktop inside agentsh when the task has restricted egress.
• Include the browser, terminal, screenshot, mouse, keyboard, font, and desktop integration packages in the sandbox image.

Companion client and agent changes: PostHog/code#3569

How did you test this code?

• Ran the desktop package stack in an Ubuntu 24.04 cloud task, exercised coordinate clicks and keyboard input through xdotool, verified terminal output, visually inspected a screenshot, and confirmed idempotent startup.
• Ran focused tests for VM selection, sandboxed desktop startup, and agent-server computer-use configuration: 3 passed. These guard against disabling WebKit isolation or launching restricted desktop processes outside agentsh.
• Ran Ruff and hogli ci:preflight --fix: no failures.
• Ran repo-wide mypy: changed files pass; the command reports one unrelated existing unused-ignore error in posthog/personhog_client/converters.py.
• The DB-backed warm-task regression test cannot run locally because this task has no Postgres service. CI identified the early warm-reuse path and a run-only field leaking into Task.objects.create(); computer use now skips warm reuse and is removed before model creation.
• Docker, Depot, and Modal credentials are unavailable here, so I could not build or launch the final VM image. CI and the external security review validate the pushed configuration.

👉 Stay up-to-date with PostHog coding conventions for a smoother review.

Automatic notifications

• Publish to changelog?
• Alert Sales and Marketing teams?

Docs update

The companion PostHog Code PR updates the computer-use documentation and setting copy.

🤖 Agent context

Autonomy: Human-driven (agent-assisted)

PostHog Code implemented the cloud-owned desktop architecture. I used /improving-drf-endpoints, /writing-tests, /depot-container-builds, /debugging-ci-failures, and /security-audit. CI covered the DB-backed cold-create path, while security review shaped the use of the existing VM and agentsh boundaries.

---

Created with PostHog Code

[github-actions]

Hey @richardsolomou! 👋

It looks like your git author email on this PR isn't your @posthog.com address (richard@solomou.dev). Since you're on the PostHog team, it's worth pointing your local git author email at your @posthog.com address. Why it matters:

• Consistent work identity in git history — internal tooling that attributes commits to team members keys off your @posthog.com address.
• Keeps team contributions easy to tell apart from external community ones when scanning history.

You can fix it for this repo with:

git config user.email "you@posthog.com"

Or set it globally with git config --global user.email "you@posthog.com". No need to redo this PR — just a nudge for next time. 🙂

[github-actions]

🤖 CI report

✅ Bundle size — no change

Uncompressed size of every built .js bundle, compared against the base branch.

Total: 64.22 MiB · no change

No file changed by more than 1000 B.

_{Posted automatically by build-bundle-size-report · uncompressed bytes from dist-report}

✅ Eager graph — within budget

How much code each root ships on the eager path — downloaded and parsed before the surface is interactive. Measured from the esbuild output chunks (post-tree-shake, static imports only); lazy import() / React.lazy chunks are not counted.

Root	Eager (shipped)	Δ vs base	Budget
entry (logged-out pages, app bootstrap) src/index.tsx	1.23 MiB · 22 files	no change	███░░░░░░░ 28.6% of 4.29 MiB
authenticated shell (every logged-in page) src/scenes/AuthenticatedShell.tsx	8.16 MiB · 2,988 files	no change	█████████░ 88.2% of 9.25 MiB

🟢 node_modules/monaco-editor/ stays out of src/index.tsx
🟢 src/lib/components/ActivityLog/describers stays out of src/index.tsx
🟢 [object Object] stays out of src/index.tsx
🟢 [object Object] stays out of src/index.tsx
🟢 node_modules/monaco-editor/ stays out of src/scenes/AuthenticatedShell.tsx
🟢 src/lib/components/ActivityLog/describers stays out of src/scenes/AuthenticatedShell.tsx
🟢 [object Object] stays out of src/scenes/AuthenticatedShell.tsx
🟢 [object Object] stays out of src/scenes/AuthenticatedShell.tsx

Largest files eagerly shipped from src/index.tsx

Size	File
126.8 KiB	../node_modules/.pnpm/react-dom@18.3.1_react@18.3.1/node_modules/react-dom/cjs/react-dom.production.min.js
24.6 KiB	../node_modules/.pnpm/buffer@6.0.3/node_modules/buffer/index.js
6.3 KiB	../node_modules/.pnpm/react@18.3.1/node_modules/react/cjs/react.production.min.js
4.5 KiB	../node_modules/.pnpm/@jspm+core@2.1.0/node_modules/@jspm/core/nodelibs/browser/process.js
3.9 KiB	../node_modules/.pnpm/scheduler@0.23.2/node_modules/scheduler/cjs/scheduler.production.min.js
1.4 KiB	../node_modules/.pnpm/base64-js@1.5.1/node_modules/base64-js/index.js
1.3 KiB	src/RootErrorBoundary.tsx
912 B	../node_modules/.pnpm/ieee754@1.2.1/node_modules/ieee754/index.js
789 B	src/scenes/ChunkLoadErrorBoundary.tsx
762 B	src/index.tsx

Largest files eagerly shipped from src/scenes/AuthenticatedShell.tsx

Size	File
281.3 KiB	../node_modules/.pnpm/posthog-js@1.404.1/node_modules/posthog-js/dist/rrweb.js
267.7 KiB	../node_modules/.pnpm/@posthog+icons@0.38.0_react-dom@18.3.1_react@18.3.1__react@18.3.1/node_modules/@posthog/icons/dist/posthog-icons.es.js
235.5 KiB	src/taxonomy/core-filter-definitions-by-group.json
223.4 KiB	../node_modules/.pnpm/posthog-js@1.404.1/node_modules/posthog-js/dist/module.js
164.0 KiB	src/queries/validators.js
154.3 KiB	../node_modules/.pnpm/re2js@0.4.1/node_modules/re2js/build/index.esm.js
126.8 KiB	../node_modules/.pnpm/react-dom@18.3.1_react@18.3.1/node_modules/react-dom/cjs/react-dom.production.min.js
105.8 KiB	src/lib/api.ts
93.3 KiB	../node_modules/.pnpm/prosemirror-view@1.40.1/node_modules/prosemirror-view/dist/index.js
93.2 KiB	../packages/quill/packages/quill/dist/index.js

_{Posted automatically by check-eager-graph · sizes are eager output bytes (shipped, post-tree-shake) from the esbuild metafile · part of #32479}

✅ Dist folder size — 🔺 +1.1 KiB (+0.0%)

Total size of the built frontend/dist folder (all assets), compared against the base branch.

Total: 1341.67 MiB · 🔺 +1.1 KiB (+0.0%)

⚠️ Backend coverage — 68.0% of changed backend lines covered — 25 uncovered

🧪 Backend test coverage

Patch coverage — changed backend lines (products + core): ██████████████░░░░░░ 68.0% (55 / 80)

File	Patch	Uncovered changed lines
products/tasks/backend/temporal/process_task/activities/tests/test_get_task_processing_context.py	0.0%	733–734, 738, 750
products/tasks/backend/temporal/process_task/activities/tests/test_start_agent_server.py	0.0%	184–188, 192–193, 196, 200, 204, 207, 212, 221
products/tasks/backend/temporal/process_task/activities/get_task_processing_context.py	33.3%	117, 366–367, 372
products/tasks/backend/logic/services/docker_sandbox.py	40.0%	941–943
products/tasks/backend/logic/services/modal_sandbox.py	80.0%	1123

🤖 Agents: add a test covering the lines above, or note why under "How did you test this code?". Machine-readable gap list: the patch-coverage artifact on this run (gh run download 29693067589 -n patch-coverage), or the coverage-data block at the end of this comment.

Per-product line coverage (touched products)

Product	Coverage	Lines
demo	███████████░░░░░░░░░ 56.2%	1,497 / 2,663
tasks	█████████████░░░░░░░ 67.0%	25,987 / 38,765
signals	████████████████░░░░ 79.4%	19,493 / 24,553
data_modeling	████████████████░░░░ 80.0%	4,834 / 6,045
cdp	████████████████░░░░ 80.7%	3,118 / 3,864
notebooks	█████████████████░░░ 85.1%	7,096 / 8,338
cohorts	█████████████████░░░ 86.2%	4,065 / 4,717
agent_platform	█████████████████░░░ 86.4%	3,807 / 4,405
actions	█████████████████░░░ 86.6%	717 / 828
product_tours	█████████████████░░░ 87.5%	1,266 / 1,447
exports	██████████████████░░ 88.4%	6,933 / 7,842
conversations	██████████████████░░ 89.0%	16,183 / 18,186
mcp_analytics	██████████████████░░ 89.2%	2,514 / 2,819
dashboards	██████████████████░░ 89.4%	5,847 / 6,540
engineering_analytics	██████████████████░░ 89.5%	5,507 / 6,154
alerts	██████████████████░░ 89.9%	4,045 / 4,499
early_access_features	██████████████████░░ 90.1%	1,031 / 1,144
error_tracking	██████████████████░░ 90.1%	9,885 / 10,966
streamlit_apps	██████████████████░░ 90.4%	2,501 / 2,767
slack_app	██████████████████░░ 90.6%	9,018 / 9,955
marketing_analytics	██████████████████░░ 90.8%	11,514 / 12,684
stamphog	██████████████████░░ 91.0%	3,993 / 4,387
product_analytics	██████████████████░░ 91.3%	5,757 / 6,304
data_warehouse	██████████████████░░ 92.4%	18,771 / 20,309
workflows	███████████████████░ 92.8%	5,482 / 5,909
ai_observability	███████████████████░ 92.8%	14,916 / 16,077
web_analytics	███████████████████░ 92.9%	13,853 / 14,913
surveys	███████████████████░ 93.0%	5,724 / 6,157
posthog_ai	███████████████████░ 93.2%	1,325 / 1,421
approvals	███████████████████░ 93.3%	3,395 / 3,640
reminders	███████████████████░ 93.4%	468 / 501
endpoints	███████████████████░ 94.1%	8,606 / 9,143
revenue_analytics	███████████████████░ 94.5%	3,598 / 3,809
skills	███████████████████░ 94.5%	2,881 / 3,049
review_hog	███████████████████░ 94.6%	6,806 / 7,191
logs	███████████████████░ 95.3%	9,844 / 10,325
experiments	███████████████████░ 95.7%	24,417 / 25,527
replay_vision	███████████████████░ 95.8%	13,776 / 14,383
annotations	███████████████████░ 96.2%	732 / 761
feature_flags	███████████████████░ 96.3%	16,233 / 16,859
user_interviews	███████████████████░ 96.4%	2,242 / 2,325
warehouse_sources	███████████████████░ 96.4%	287,423 / 298,013
customer_analytics	███████████████████░ 97.2%	7,482 / 7,700
data_catalog	███████████████████░ 97.4%	2,303 / 2,365
pulse	████████████████████ 98.4%	2,017 / 2,049

Report-only. Patch coverage = changed backend lines covered vs origin/master. Sorted lowest first.
Known gaps: lines covered only by Temporal tests show as uncovered; core line numbers may drift if master changed the same file.

[github-actions]

🦔 Hogbox preview · ✅ ready

▶ Open the preview

🔑 Login	test@posthog.com / 12345678 (demo data)
🧩 Running	this PR's backend and frontend, on the PostHog :master base
🔗 Link	stable across rebuilds — a re-push swaps the box underneath, the URL stays
🔒 Access	tailnet only (PostHog VPN)
🛠️ Admin	inspect & debug state in hogland
💤 Idle	sleeps after ~30 min idle (snapshot to S3, zero node cost) and wakes on your next visit in ~30s, behind a brief "waking up" screen

_{commit 44a6a0e · box box-a5085cdbeaf2 · ready in 749s (push → usable) · build log · rebuilds on every push, torn down on close}

[veria-ai]

PR overview

All previously flagged issues have been addressed. No open security concerns remain on this pull request.

Security review

No open security issues remain on this pull request.

Fixed/addressed: 1 · PR risk: 0/10

[scheduled-actions-posthog]

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[trunk-io]

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[scheduled-actions-posthog]

This PR hasn't seen activity in a week! Should it be merged, closed, or further worked on? If you want to keep it open, please remove the stale label – otherwise this will be closed in another week. If you want to permanently keep it open, use the waiting label.