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title: "Bash" description: "Run shell commands, pipes, and file manipulation inside the VM with vm.exec()." category: "Quickstart" order: 2

Run real shell commands inside a VM. Reach for this when you need to shell out — invoke CLIs, chain pipes, or read and write files — without leaving the sandbox.

How it works

Create a VM with AgentOs.create(), then call vm.exec() with any shell string. Each call runs the command in the VM and resolves to a result carrying stdout, stderr, and exitCode. Because it's a real shell, pipes (|), redirects (>, >>), and tools like grep and tr work as written, and files persist across calls within the same VM. Call vm.dispose() when you're done to release it.

Run it

npm install
npm run start -- bash

You'll see the echoed greeting, the piped uppercase output, the contents of /tmp/test.txt, the matched grep line, and a final exit code of 0.

Source

View the source on GitHub: https://github.com/rivet-dev/agent-os/tree/main/examples/quickstart/bash