Cole Murray (OpenInspect creator) discusses the architectural trade-offs between hosting AI agent harnesses inside sandboxed environments versus running the control plane externally.
“In my opinion, running it out of the box is much more complex because you have state that has to be managed. Whereas if you're running it in the box all of the state of that agent is actually in the box. And yes, it's, you could persist it elsewhere, but it's all kind of localized and you have less concerns to worry about.”
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More from Cole Murray
Insight
Murray: Standalone agents cannot compete against sandbox and model layers
“I don't want to compete for like 20 dollars a seat. I think that that is just a really difficult business. I think it's very easy to copy the main pieces of it. I mean, again, like I built this fairly quickly, and I think because you are not owning, I guess, t…”
Cole MurrayMay 28, 2026▶ 8:43Devin’s 80% Moment: Background Agents, 7x PRs, & End of Hand-Held Coding — Walden Yan & Cole Murray
Insight
Murray: Codebases regress to worst engineer as AI multiplies bad patterns
“The meme that I have is that your code base regresses to your worst engineer because that engineer who is, you know, very gung ho about AI and is not auditing their code, their pattern starts cementing into the code. And now the AI is referencing their pattern…”
Cole MurrayMay 28, 2026▶ 46:43Devin’s 80% Moment: Background Agents, 7x PRs, & End of Hand-Held Coding — Walden Yan & Cole Murray
Insight
Murray: Background agents require deep company integration to provide real value
“It's one thing to kind of have the background agent system set up, but if it isn't actually integrated into your larger ecosystem, It isn't that useful. I mean, it is useful to be able to kick off sessions, but what we really want to be able to do is hook it i…”
Cole MurrayMay 28, 2026▶ 27:27Devin’s 80% Moment: Background Agents, 7x PRs, & End of Hand-Held Coding — Walden Yan & Cole Murray
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Murray: AI agent budgets typically run $1,000 to $5,000 per engineer
“Common numbers that I hear are anywhere from a thousand an engineer up to 5000 an engineer. I have not heard anywhere in the realm of, like, 50,000 an engineer for a frame of reference.”
Cole MurrayMay 28, 2026▶ 1:06:32Devin’s 80% Moment: Background Agents, 7x PRs, & End of Hand-Held Coding — Walden Yan & Cole Murray
Insight
Murray: A good developer environment setup solves agent sandbox setup
“I think any environment that you've set up that is a good experience for your developer naturally lends itself to being easy to set up for the agent. And once you figure out kind of that local developer story you've kind of more or less solved the Agent in a s…”
Cole MurrayMay 28, 2026▶ 18:55Devin’s 80% Moment: Background Agents, 7x PRs, & End of Hand-Held Coding — Walden Yan & Cole Murray
Opinion
Murray: Integrated AI reviewers are critical for background agent systems
“I think to touch on that as well, I think having the AI reviewer integrated into the system is a critical part of this background system.”
Cole MurrayMay 28, 2026▶ 26:37Devin’s 80% Moment: Background Agents, 7x PRs, & End of Hand-Held Coding — Walden Yan & Cole Murray
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