#containers

OpenAI on March 11, 2026 detailed how it combines the Responses API with a shell tool and hosted containers to give agents a managed computer environment. The company says the design is meant to make file handling, tool execution, network access, and long-running workflows easier to run in production.

OpenAI Developers said on March 21, 2026 that container startup for skills, hosted shell, and code interpreter was about 10x faster via a new container pool in the Responses API. Updated OpenAI shell docs show hosted shell can create containers automatically, reuse active containers by reference, and keep them alive for 20 minutes of inactivity.