Architecture

How agentOS uses WebAssembly and V8 isolates to run agent workloads.

V8 isolates

agentOS uses V8 isolates (the same engine behind Node.js, Chromium, and Cloudflare Workers) to run JavaScript and TypeScript workloads. Isolates provide near-native execution speed with strong memory isolation between actors. Each actor gets its own isolate with no shared state.

WebAssembly kernel

The kernel is a WebAssembly module that provides a POSIX-like interface to the V8 isolate. It manages:

• Process table. Each process (shell command, script, agent session) runs as its own WebAssembly instance coordinated by the kernel. Processes are isolated from each other.
• Virtual filesystem. A unified filesystem abstraction backed by pluggable drivers (in-memory, SQLite VFS, S3, host directories).
• Virtual network. Outbound requests are proxied through the host with configurable controls. No direct host network access.

Process isolation

Every process spawned inside the VM gets its own WebAssembly instance. This means:

• A runaway process cannot corrupt another process’s memory
• Each process has its own stack and heap
• The kernel mediates all IPC and filesystem access between processes

Runtimes

Three runtimes mount into the kernel:

• WebAssembly for POSIX utilities (coreutils, grep, sed, etc.)
• V8 isolate for JavaScript/TypeScript agent code
• Pyodide for Python workloads with kernel-backed I/O