Run your AI agents' computers on Novita

What is Novita?

Novita AI is a cloud platform for AI developers. Alongside model APIs and GPU instances, it runs the Agent Sandbox: isolated Linux machines that an agent can start in seconds, run commands in, and pause when it is done. A paused sandbox keeps its disk and memory, and resumes as the same machine.

Novita offers a desktop image for these sandboxes, which is what SFCrew builds on. You need a Novita account and an API key. Usage is billed by Novita, not by SFCrew.

What a bot can do on a Novita computer

SFCrew turns each Novita sandbox into a full bot computer. A bot works there the same way it does on any other Linux provider, and you see it in the computer panel next to the chat.

• Use a Linux desktop and browser, with each bot on its own screen when several bots share one computer.
• Run shell commands, which you or the bot can cancel, and read and write files.
• You can open a terminal on the computer yourself, watch the screen live, and take over when a bot asks for help with a login or a captcha.
• When the computer sits idle or is stopped, SFCrew pauses it instead of deleting it. Files, browser profiles and the memory of running programs are kept, and the next use resumes the same computer.

When to choose Novita

Choose Novita when bots run long, multi-step work in a browser and you want them to come back to exactly where they were, not to a fresh desktop rebuilt from saved files. It also fits if you already use Novita for models or GPUs and want one fewer account.

E2B pauses idle computers in a similar way and is what SFCrew's own live computer tests run on. Boat is what SFCrew Cloud uses, with a separate Chrome profile for each bot, but it keeps the disk, not running programs. Railway rebuilds a computer from saved files after every stop. If you don't want a cloud account at all, Docker runs computers on your own server. The sandbox comparison puts them side by side.

Limits

• It needs a one-time template build in your Novita account. SFCrew does not fall back to Novita's larger stock desktop.
• You can't pick a region from SFCrew.
• Paused computers still use storage, which Novita bills and retains on its own terms.
• If SFCrew can't confirm that a command stopped, it pauses the computer and sets it aside. It stays paused until you choose Recover or Reset, so it is never resumed silently with a stuck command inside.
• Novita computers are for self-hosted SFCrew. SFCrew Cloud runs its computers on Boat.

How to set it up

This is done once by the admin of a self-hosted SFCrew deployment. Everyone else on that deployment then gets Novita computers without doing anything.

1. Create an API key in your Novita account.
2. Build the computer template in that same account: NOVITA_API_KEY=<your-key> pnpm sandbox:novita-template. It creates a template called sfcrew-computer with 2 vCPU and 4 GB of memory, based on Novita's desktop image.
3. Set SANDBOX_PROVIDER=novita and NOVITA_API_KEY on both the API and the worker, then restart them. Or, as an admin, open Settings → Computer and choose Novita under New computers run on.
4. Open a bot's computer to check that it starts and shows a desktop.

Using your own template

To use a different desktop template, set SANDBOX_TEMPLATE to its name both when you build it and on the API and worker. Rebuild after the template definition changes. Computers that already exist keep the template and resources they started with. The computer providers guide has the full details.