Sandbox
A sandbox is a separate organization that runs on test money (test USDC on Base Sepolia and Arc testnet), and every organization can have one. You can use it to connect an agent, write a policy, and test payments before you move real money. Apart from the differences listed below, our sandbox works the same way a live organization does.
Open the sandbox
An admin has to open the sandbox the first time, by choosing Switch to sandbox in the organization menu at the top of the console's sidebar. After that, anyone on your team can switch between live and sandbox from the same menu.
We create the sandbox when it's first opened, which can take a few seconds. A new sandbox comes with the following:
- The sandbox's first account.
- A counterparty named Catena.
- A sandbox Default Policy, which lets an agent read every account and send test funds back to Catena.
The Default Policy is enough for a first test payment. For anything more, we recommend writing your own policy.
Differences
Below are the areas where the sandbox differs from a live organization:
| Area | In the sandbox |
|---|---|
| Money | Test USDC on Base Sepolia and Arc testnet. Deposit requests test USDC on Base Sepolia, once an hour. To move test USDC to Arc testnet, send it there. OUSD is not available in the sandbox. |
| Bank transfers | Not available. |
| x402 and MPP payments | Base Sepolia only. |
| Notifications | Email only. Slack notifications are not available. |
Everything else works as it does in a live organization, including agents, policies, counterparties, approvals, activity, reports, the CLI, the MCP connection, the SDK, and x402 payments.
Agents in the sandbox
An agent connected to the sandbox is not connected to your live organization. When you approve a CLI link or sign in to an MCP connector, you'll choose which organization the agent joins. To move an agent's work to live, connect it to the live organization and give it a live policy.
In the sandbox, commands that take a network accept base-sepolia and
arc-testnet.