Overview

A workspace is the agent’s execution environment. It supplies the resources the agent acts with, and owns the lifecycle of everything living inside it (MCP server processes, dynamically added skills, offloaded files):

Resource	What the Workspace Provides
Tools	Built-in tools (Bash, Read, Write, …) executed through the workspace’s backend, plus tools from registered MCP servers
Skills	Markdown instruction sets stored under `skills/`, loadable by the agent’s `Skill` viewer
Context offloading	Persistent storage for compressed messages and truncated tool results, via the `Offloader` protocol

AgentScope ships six workspace implementations, one per execution environment. All of them expose the same interface, so the same agent code runs against any backend:

Class	Environment	Persistence
`LocalWorkspace`	Host filesystem	`workdir` on the host
`DockerWorkspace`	Docker container	Host `workdir` bind-mounted to `/workspace`; omit it for an ephemeral container
`E2BWorkspace`	E2B cloud sandbox	Sandbox filesystem; reattached by sandbox metadata
`DaytonaWorkspace`	Daytona sandbox	Sandbox filesystem; reattached by sandbox labels
`K8sWorkspace`	Kubernetes Pod	PVC mounted into the Pod; reattached by workspace-id-derived name
`OpenSandboxWorkspace`	OpenSandbox sandbox	Sandbox filesystem; reattached by sandbox metadata

Interface

Every implementation derives from WorkspaceBase, whose methods fall into four roles:

Role	Methods	Called By
Lifecycle	`initialize()` / `close()` / `reset()`, plus the `async with` protocol	The developer, or a workspace manager
Discovery	`list_tools()` / `list_mcps()` / `list_skills()` / `get_instructions()`	Agent assembly, to build the toolkit and system prompt
Offloading	`offload_context()` / `offload_tool_result()`	The agent, when compression or truncation fires
Dynamic management	`add_mcp()` / `remove_mcp()` / `add_skill()` / `remove_skill()`	The developer or service, at runtime

For the sandboxed backends (Docker, E2B, Daytona, K8s, OpenSandbox), MCP servers run inside the isolated environment; the host reaches them through an in-workspace gateway, covered in MCP Gateway.

Next Steps

Run Workspace

Create a workspace on any backend and wire it into an agent.

Manage Resources

Add and remove MCP servers and skills at runtime.

MCP Gateway

How sandboxed workspaces expose their MCP servers to the host.

Workspace Manager

Allocate and isolate workspaces per user, agent, or session in a service.

Get Started

Building Blocks

Agent as Service

Others

Interface

Next Steps

Run Workspace

Manage Resources

MCP Gateway

Workspace Manager

​Interface

​Next Steps

Run Workspace

Manage Resources

MCP Gateway

Workspace Manager

Interface

Next Steps