This is the right general idea, but it does read as an ad for Cloudflare OS.
Every tech company is scrambling to be the stable foundation for people in enterprise to build cute little one-off apps safely. It's a perfectly fine pattern, but it's hard to imagine a world where Cloudflare becomes the default. Much easier to imagine Google or Microsoft adopting whatever UI/UX patterns work well and tying into enterprise data natively.
As the author I’d say it’s more of an ad for sandboxes + the idea of OCaps
Unless I’ve missed something obvious in my research, Dynamic Workers are the main product implementing this pattern today, but I expect there will be others for all the reasons I laid out in the article.
The doc does read like an ad disguised as an educational content.
DeepSeek is taking on the "OS" (double quoted cuz of a dumb comment in this thread) role with DSH (deepseek harness) for the apps with plugin architectures.
We have reached the point where people want to create frameworks/infrastructures as it was all the rage (actually that comes up ever other year).
By only providing the ideas here, people want to take credits for later is my take on docs like this.
- they can only say, "I was wrong".
I hate that they called it that. I hope they change the name, to me an OS implies... an OS. I don't want to hear marketing excuses about that, I don't need every other company copying CloudFlare butcher a useful descriptor and now we have a bunch of "AI OS" type apps out there. Just call it what it is... an Agent Workspace. They could have called it CloudFlare Agents or something to that effect?
I am the lead engineer on Cloudflare OS (and Cloudflare Workers).
I am also the creator of Sandstorm.io.
And I'm the one calling it a successor. Wasn't some marketing decision -- that's directly from me.
Honestly really interested to know why you feel this isn't accurate.
FWIW, I didn't choose the name Cloudflare OS -- but I did frequently describe Sandstorm as being an OS, back in the day. Sure, it layers on top of Linux, but it's an environment where you install apps and run them, with the platform managing the execution environment, permissions, resource management, etc. That's sort of what an OS does. Cloudflare OS does all that as well.
Awww, I was hoping GP would respond before they realized who they were responding to, could have been a classic exchange in the vein of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079
I didn't know about Sandstorm, but you might have an easier way conveying this by stating "Created and inspired by Sandstorm.io and its creator." I think the "inspired by" remark is easier for most to understand, and it sells it more if you point out that you're its author.
As for the name, yeah, not really a fan as I noted above.
FWIW I saw the original posts, knew who wrote them, and know that Cloudflare OS is open source. It's because Sandstorm is about running anyone's apps, while where you introduce it you say this:
> the AI cannot introduce a significant security bug
The AI-authored apps aspect is obviously something that Sandstorm didn't have.
But Cloudflare OS also supports a concept of "blueprints", where, once you've built your app, you create a "blueprint" (a copy of the code) and share it with others, from which they can create their own instances of the app. So it is still very much about sharing apps and running other people's apps, and the sandbox makes this safe and compliant even if you're not sure the app developer knows what they're doing.
Every tech company is scrambling to be the stable foundation for people in enterprise to build cute little one-off apps safely. It's a perfectly fine pattern, but it's hard to imagine a world where Cloudflare becomes the default. Much easier to imagine Google or Microsoft adopting whatever UI/UX patterns work well and tying into enterprise data natively.