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Agent CWD and Leftover Disk: Five Myths About Paths, Persistence, and Cleanup

CWD sets the starting point for relative paths, not a universal access boundary or a promise about leftover files. See how OpenAI sandbox snapshots, mounts, and sessions affect persistence.

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Short answer: an agent’s current working directory (CWD) determines where relative paths start; it does not, by itself, define what files the agent can access or what survives after a run. In the OpenAI Agents SDK, workspace persistence depends on session and snapshot configuration, and mounted or ephemeral paths are excluded from durable workspace snapshots. Other products may behave differently.

Myth 1: CWD is the sandbox boundary

CWD is a path-resolution setting, not a complete description of filesystem access. In the OpenAI Agents SDK, relative paths used by built-in command, image, and patch tools resolve from the run’s configured CWD. Session-level file APIs, by contrast, use workspace-root-relative paths. The sandbox’s access controls and workspace boundary must be considered separately from either path convention. See the OpenAI Agents SDK sandbox guide and Workspace Paths reference.

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Myth 2: If the agent can see a file, it will be saved

Visibility during a run does not guarantee durable persistence. The Agents SDK documents snapshot restore and archiving for runner-owned sessions, but persistence depends on the session lifecycle and snapshot setup. If a usable snapshot is not configured, the documented behavior includes a fallback; do not assume every run is automatically backed up.

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Mounted and ephemeral paths are not copied into snapshots as durable workspace contents, according to the Python sandbox guide. The API sandbox agents guide likewise describes snapshot persistence skipping mounted remote storage. A file can therefore be available to a run without becoming part of its durable workspace snapshot.

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Myth 3: Cleanup means every byte is deleted

Workspace snapshots and session archival explain how some saved state is handled; they do not establish a universal guarantee that every temporary file is deleted after every exit. The cited OpenAI documentation does not specify what happens to all temporary host files after crashes, forced termination, or cleanup failures. Check the cleanup guarantees for the specific runner and provider instead of treating “sandbox” as proof of complete disk reclamation.

Myth 4: Every agent starts in the same directory

Defaults vary by product and configuration. OpenAI-hosted sandboxes document /workspace as the default working directory, and commands can set their own CWD. In SDK runs, the run-level CWD can be configured relative to the workspace. These are OpenAI-specific documented behaviors, not a convention that applies to every agent. See OpenAI-hosted sandboxes and the Agents SDK sandbox guide.

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Myth 5: CWD and conversation memory are the same thing

They are separate mechanisms. CWD determines how relative paths are resolved for a run. Workspace persistence concerns files and saved sandbox state; conversational sessions concern message history and continuity. The API guide distinguishes sandbox run configuration and saved state from the conversational session concept. Resuming a conversation should not be treated as proof that a particular workspace snapshot was restored, or vice versa. See the Sandbox Agents guide and OpenAI-hosted sandboxes guide.

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What to check before relying on files after a run

When evaluating an agent implementation, check these behaviors independently:

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  • Path resolution: determine where relative paths for run tools start, and whether session file APIs instead resolve from the workspace root.
  • Session lifecycle: establish whether a run creates a fresh session, reuses one, or resumes saved state.
  • Snapshot behavior: confirm whether snapshots are configured, restored, and archived, and what fallback applies when a usable snapshot is absent.
  • Mount handling: find out whether mounted storage is copied into saved state or remains external to the snapshot.
  • Cleanup guarantees: look for documented behavior on normal completion as well as abnormal exits; do not infer deletion guarantees from workspace persistence documentation alone.

The OpenAI documentation supports these distinctions for its described implementations. It does not establish identical behavior across other coding agents, local sandboxes, cloud runners, or every failure mode.

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