OpenClaw Creator's new secret project...
In a Nutshell
Crabbox solves the scaling bottleneck of running many parallel AI agent sessions by providing isolated cloud sandboxes for testing instead of sharing local environments. Agents can warm up a sandbox, sync uncommitted code changes instantly via `crabbox run`, execute tests with Playwright, and collect video/screenshot evidence without commits or environment conflicts. The setup requires a Dockerfile, `.crabbox.yml` config, and setup script, allowing agents to independently spin up dev servers, test, fix bugs, and retest in seconds while keeping all sessions isolated.
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Peter Steinberg, author of OpenClaw, is working on Crabbox, a tool that enables people running hundreds of different agents in parallel to verify agents work very easily.
For the past few months, the biggest challenge has been the number of parallel agent sessions running at the same time. After teams start setting up different loops, agents find issues and pick up work autonomously. At any given time, there are at least 10 different agent sessions running, with Peter running at least 15 different sessions in parallel.
This results in a massive amount of PRs that wasn't possible before, but creates a huge burden on reviewing PRs and getting them shipped to real customers. Each PR carries the risk of breaking the system. The bottleneck is no longer writing code, but how to get code merged into the codebase.
One key practice is setting up the right codebase harness. The first step of a codebase harness is giving agents tools and skills to verify their work and have evidence. Playwright is the best option because it allows agents to use browsers to test by themselves and output artifacts like video recordings. Agents can include these artifacts as evidence in PRs, making it easier to merge agent work into the real codebase.
This setup worked fine when running 3-4 different agents simultaneously, but breaks when many agents run in parallel and make changes to database schemas or need to run tests at the same time.
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