Codewhale cloud-agent snapshot

The sandbox a /dispatch run launches from is a Daytona snapshot built from this directory's Dockerfile, with the codewhale CLI preinstalled. Daytona's create-sandbox API launches from snapshots — a raw image is only ever a snapshot-build input — so "snapshot" is the correct and only restorable artifact class here.

Why this exists (founder decision, 2026-08-29): the created sandbox must run codewhale exec --auto itself, authenticated as the dispatching account, resolving the account's configured model — dispatch → sandbox (own codewhale) → account identity → forge PR. The account identity is injected at create time as the CODEWHALE_API_KEY env var (a cwc_key_… machine token); no provider API key ever widens into the sandbox (BYOK stays local).

Build the snapshot (operator, once per codewhale rev)

daytona snapshot create codewhale-cloud-agent \
  --dockerfile ./Dockerfile \
  --cpu 2 --memory 4

The default name codewhale-cloud-agent matches DEFAULT_CLOUD_AGENT_SNAPSHOT in crates/tui/src/cloud_dispatch.rs; a different name is set per host with CODEWHALE_DISPATCH_SNAPSHOT (slug charset, ≤64 chars — an invalid override falls back to the default).
Pin a rev with --build-arg CODEWHALE_GIT_REV=<sha> when the default moves past the rev you verified.
Daytona snapshots deactivate after two weeks of disuse; reactivate before reuse or create fails.
Resource sizing: the harness declares a one-hour turn budget; 2 vCPU / 4 GB is the floor the offline tests assume.

What the create call sends

LiveDaytonaLauncher::create_sandbox POSTs to the provider's sandbox endpoint with:

{
  "name": "cw-<job-id>",
  "snapshot": "codewhale-cloud-agent",
  "env": { "CODEWHALE_API_KEY": "<account machine token>" },
  "labels": { "codewhale.job": "<id>", "codewhale.forge": "<forge>", "codewhale.product": "dispatch" }
}

Labels are applied via the provider's dedicated labels endpoint right after create (Daytona does not apply create-body labels); a labels failure tears the fresh sandbox down and fails the create truthfully — an unlabeled sandbox is spend the orphan reconciler can never find.

Machine tokens

Minted from the web app (Account → API keys) or the CLI's cloud api-key surface; cwc_key_-prefixed, read-mostly scopes, revocable server-side. A confirmed dispatch without one refuses before any spend: the sandbox's codewhale would have no identity to run as.