Vibe Containers

This project provides a containerized environment for running Mistral Vibe open source coding agent CLI. It includes a Containerfile and helper scripts to build and run containers with proper user permissions and a bit better security settings.

Features

• A Bit More Secure Container: Runs with dropped capabilities and no new privileges.
• User Namespace Isolation: Uses --userns keep-id for proper file permissions.
• Persistent Configuration: Mounts the vibe configuration directory.
• Current Directory Access: Mounts the current working directory.

Files

• Containerfile: Dockerfile that builds a Fedora-based image with Mistral Vibe installed and a few CLI binaries.
• build: Script to build the container image with proper user/group arguments.
• bin/vibe-container: Script to run the Mistral Vibe container.
• bin/vibe-acp-container: Script to run the Mistral Vibe ACP (Agent Client Protocol) container.

Prerequisites

• Podman installed.
• Proper user permissions to run containers.
• At least Bash version 4. MacOS comes with Bash 3, but users can install an up-to-date version themselves.

Usage

Add bin Directory to Your PATH

To use the container scripts conveniently, configure your shell to include bin directory in your PATH environment variable. Example for POSIX-compliant shells:

export PATH="${PATH}:/path/to/vibe-containers/bin"

Build the Container

cd /path/to/vibe-containers
./build

This will create a container image tagged as vibe-sandbox with your current user's UID and GID.

Run Mistral Vibe

vibe-container

This launches an interactive container with Mistral Vibe running in your current directory.

You can also specify a custom entrypoint, for example:

ENTRYPOINT=ls vibe-container -ahlZ

Run Mistral Vibe ACP

vibe-acp-container

This launches an interactive container with Mistral Vibe ACP running in your current directory.

This script is for use with editors and IDEs with ACP support. For instance, you can add Vibe Container to JetBrains IDEs by creating the ~/.jetbrains/acp.json file with the following contents:

{
  "default_mcp_settings": {},
  "agent_servers": {
    "Vibe Container": {
      "command": "/path/to/vibe-containers/bin/vibe-acp-container"
    }
  }
}

You can also specify a custom entrypoint, for example:

ENTRYPOINT=ls vibe-acp-container -ahlZ

Working Directory Validation

The scripts validate the working directory against absolute path prefixes defined in ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/vibe-containers/work-dir-prefix.list file on Linux distributions and ${HOME}/.config/vibe-containers/work-dir-prefix.list file on other systems or when XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not set.

If the file exists, the working directory must start with one of the prefixes listed in the file, one per line. If the file is empty, the working directory will not match any prefix, and thus the scripts will refuse to start the container.

Example:

mkdir -p '~/.config/vibe-containers'
echo '/home/user/projects' > '~/.config/vibe-containers/work-dir-prefix.list'

This ensures containers only run in approved directories.

It is recommended to maintain the prefix list because the scripts will recursively change the working directory's SELinux context to grant access to Podman containers.

Environment Variables

• VIBE_HOME: Path to the vibe configuration directory (defaults to ~/.vibe).
• ENTRYPOINT: Entrypoint executable. Defaults to vibe for vibe-container and vibe-acp for vibe-acp-container.

How it Works

The working directory inside containers will be the same as the host's working directory (.) from which the containers are run. The containers assume rootless Podman with a non-root user inside. This is why host UID and GID are the same inside containers.

Limitations

• Currently, Vibe Containers narrow the filesystem access only.
• Your project directory, as well as Mistral Vibe configuration and API key, will be writable inside containers.
• The agent can only run binaries that are accessible inside containers, which in this case means no SDKs.
• The scripts assume that the save_dir in Mistral Vibe's config.toml is set to the effective value of ${VIBE_HOME:-${HOME}/.vibe}/logs/session.
• Containers "don't contain as well as virtualization; they don't contain as well as separate systems".

Security Features

• All capabilities dropped (--cap-drop all).
• No new privileges (--security-opt no-new-privileges).
• User namespace isolation (--userns keep-id).
• Root password disabled and account expired.

License

Vibe Containers
Copyright (C) 2026  Piotr Orzechowski [orzechowski.tech]

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, version 3 of the License.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

Disclaimer

This project is in no way associated with or endorsed by Mistral AI.