Container Use

Container Use is a Go binary that the coding agent starts as a local MCP server. It uses Dagger to build and run containers and git worktrees for branching. When the agent calls its environment tools, Container Use creates an environment from the current branch: a container with the project's configured base image and dependencies, plus a dedicated branch that records the agent's file changes and command history.

It does not coordinate agents with each other. Parallelism comes from each agent session (in the same or different MCP clients) getting its own environment, and a new chat can resume an existing environment by naming its ID in the prompt. The user decides what happens to each environment.

State lives in git and in the container runtime: environment branches keep the work and history, and the project's default configuration is stored in the repository so new environments start from it. Configuration an agent changes stays inside its environment until imported.

The agent's work stays out of your working tree until you act. You can inspect an environment without switching branches (log, diff), follow all environments live with watch, open a shell inside a running container with terminal to see its state or take over, or check it out locally. You then merge it, apply it as staged changes to commit yourself, keep iterating by prompting the agent in the same environment, or delete it. For Claude Code the quickstart also shows restricting the agent to Container Use tools with --allowedTools, so it cannot fall back to editing files directly.

brew install dagger/tap/container-use

# Requires Docker and Git; the repository needs at least one commit
brew install dagger/tap/container-use
container-use version

cd /path/to/repository
claude mcp add container-use -- container-use stdio
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dagger/container-use/main/rules/agent.md >> CLAUDE.md

# After prompting the agent, review its environments
container-use list
container-use log fancy-mallard
container-use diff fancy-mallard
container-use terminal fancy-mallard     # shell inside the container
container-use apply fancy-mallard        # stage the changes, then commit yourself
container-use delete fancy-mallard

# Codex instead: add to ~/.codex/config.toml
# [mcp_servers.container-use]
# command = "container-use"
# args = ["stdio"]

• Docker and Git must be installed; the Homebrew tap is for macOS, and the install script covers other platforms.
• An open issue reports that it does not work in a repository without an initial commit.
• Agents only use environments when they call Container Use's tools; the docs recommend adding the agent rules file and, for Claude Code, optionally limiting tools with --allowedTools.
• Default configuration changes apply only to new environments; changes an agent made need container-use config import <env>.
• cu is an alias for container-use.
• The latest tagged release is v0.4.2 (August 2025); later fixes on main, such as the August 2026 path-traversal fix, require building from source.

Yes. It is an MCP server: agents add container-use stdio as a stdio MCP server and call its environment tools.

Any MCP-capable agent. The docs include setup for Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, OpenCode, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code/Copilot, Zed, Goose, Amp, Cline, Kiro, Gemini CLI, JetBrains Junie and others.

Yes. It is Apache-2.0 licensed and its docs describe no paid tier. It needs Docker to run containers.

Use container-use merge <env> to keep the agent's commit history, or container-use apply <env> to stage the changes and write your own commit. delete discards the environment.

The README labels it experimental and in early development, and the last tagged release is v0.4.2 from August 2025.