# Agent mode

Agent mode is for sandboxes you keep for a long time and use now and then: an assistant per user, a bot that answers webhooks, a coding agent that keeps its repository. It sleeps when idle and wakes on any request, message, command or schedule, with its memory, processes, files and conversations as they were.

```sh
harebox new --agent --size 1c2g --name helper
harebox exec current -- echo ready
harebox sleep current
harebox exec current -- echo "woken by a command"
```

## What it costs

You pay a **standby fee of $1.00 per GB of RAM a month** ($0.00137 per GB-hour), awake or asleep, charged daily from the wallet. While it's awake, machine time is the size's Shared rate, the same as any sandbox. While it's asleep with a standard wake, nothing else is charged.

| Size | Disk | Standby a month | Awake, per hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 vCPU / 2 GB | 10 GB | $2.00 | $0.00891 |
| 2 vCPU / 4 GB (`small`) | 20 GB | $4.00 | $0.01782 |
| 4 vCPU / 8 GB (`default`) | 40 GB | $8.00 | $0.03564 |

An agent of 2 GB awake 10 hours in a month costs $2.09. There is no standby fee during the trial, which allows two agents.

## Waking

An agent wakes on its own: a command, a file call, a prompt, a request to one of its [endpoints](../guides/endpoints.html), a message to a [managed agent](../platforms/managed-agents.html), or a schedule. You don't wake it by hand, though `harebox wake` works too. Timers inside a sleeping machine don't run, so use a schedule or a [trigger](../platforms/triggers-and-channels.html) for work on a clock.

| Wake | Asleep, its memory is | Asleep, it pays | Wake target |
|---|---|---|---|
| `standard` (the default) | Saved to the host's NVMe. After 6 hours asleep the agent is parked: memory and disk go to object storage and its host's copy is released | Standby only | Under 2 s from NVMe (target); a few seconds once parked, when it starts on any host with room |
| `instant` | Kept in the host's RAM, paused | Standby plus the Shared rate, as if running | Milliseconds (target) |

Wake times are targets: none has been measured on a server. `sandbox.woke` reports each wake's `wake_ms` and where its memory came back from (`memory_tier`).

## Defaults and limits

- An agent sleeps after 60 idle seconds unless you set `sleep.idle_seconds`, and has no auto-stop unless you set one.
- Only awake agents count toward your plan's running limit. Agents per account: Build 1,000, Team 10,000, Scale 50,000, Fleet 200,000.
- Agent mode takes the sizes above only, and keeps to them on fork, resize and resume.
- An agent keeps its memory for as long as it lives, parked or not. Other sleeping sandboxes become `stopped` after 7 days.
- A parked agent can be stopped or deleted as usual. To fork one, wake it first.