daytona-shell

daytona-shell

Interactive shell over a Mesa repo running inside a Daytona sandbox, written in TypeScript.

Spins up a Daytona sandbox from an image with Mesa installed, mounts a repo via FUSE, and drops you into a minimal shell. Commands execute inside the sandbox against the mounted filesystem.

See also: daytona-python-shell for the Python version.

Quick start

npm install

# Create a .env in this directory (gitignored)
cp .env.example .env

# Now populate your .env file with the required values

# Run
npm start

Creating Daytona sandbox...
Mounting Mesa...
Connected to ~/.local/share/mesa/mnt/acme/daytona-123456789. Type "exit" or Ctrl+C to quit.

$ printf 'Hello from Daytona and Mesa!\n' > hello.txt
$ cat hello.txt
Hello from Daytona and Mesa!
$ exit
Cleaning up sandbox...
Bye!

How it works

1. Builds a Daytona image with Mesa and its FUSE configuration.
2. Creates a temporary Daytona sandbox.
3. Mints a 30-minute access token restricted to the repo.
4. Passes MESA_ACCESS_TOKEN to the mesa mount command. The private key never enters the sandbox.
5. Starts the FUSE daemon (mesa mount --daemonize), then drops you into a REPL in the mounted repo.
6. Deletes the sandbox and temporary repo when the shell exits.

By default, MesaFS mounts every repo the access token can access. Since this token is restricted to the temporary repo, that is the only repo in the mount.

Environment variables

Variable	Description
MESA_REPO	The repository to mount
MESA_PRIVATE_KEY	Mesa private key stored only in the trusted host process
DAYTONA_API_KEY	Daytona API key (get one here)

Requirements

• Node.js >= 18
• Mesa account with a private key
• Daytona account with an API key