Contributing

Contribute to Agent Canvas development.

Agent Canvas is open source. To work on it from source:

1. Clone the repo and install dependencies:

   git clone https://github.com/OpenHands/OpenHands.git
   cd OpenHands
   npm install
   

2. Start the full development stack:

   npm run dev
   

For development workflows, environment variables, testing, and advanced configuration, see the Development Guide in the repository.

Docker Conversation Runtime Settings

When running Agent Canvas locally via the dev-safe.mjs launcher, Canvas can forward conversation-runtime settings to its bundled Agent Server. This enables OH_CONVERSATION_RUNTIME=docker, which runs each conversation in an isolated Docker container instead of the default local process runtime.

Canvas forwards these settings only when the operator explicitly sets them. Unset values remain absent so Agent Server defaults stay authoritative.

Environment Variable	Type	Launcher Default	Description
OH_CONVERSATION_RUNTIME	string	unset	Conversation runtime type. Set to docker to run conversations in Docker containers.
OH_CONVERSATION_IMAGE	string	unset	Docker image to use for conversation containers.
OH_CONVERSATION_CONTAINER_MEMORY	string	unset	Memory limit for conversation containers (e.g., 2g).
OH_CONVERSATION_CONTAINER_CPUS	string	unset	CPU limit for conversation containers.
OH_CONVERSATION_CONTAINER_PIDS_LIMIT	string	unset	PID limit for conversation containers.
OH_CONVERSATION_CONTAINER_STARTUP_TIMEOUT	string	unset	Startup timeout for conversation containers (seconds).

These variables are specific to Canvas’s dev-safe.mjs launcher and are forwarded to the bundled Agent Server process. Docker provisioning and setting interpretation are handled by Agent Server.

These settings select the conversation runtime. For tool-only container isolation using OH_EXECUTION_*, see Isolate Tool Execution with Docker.