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Glossary

What is gVisor?

Answer in brief

An open-source application kernel from Google that intercepts a container’s system calls in user space, adding a boundary between the workload and the host kernel.

By the Agent Sandboxes editors · Updated

gVisor in agent sandboxes

gVisor implements a large part of the Linux system-call interface in a memory-safe user-space process (the “Sentry”). Containers run under the runsc runtime, so their system calls are handled by gVisor rather than passed straight to the host kernel. This shrinks the host attack surface compared with plain containers, without requiring a full VM per workload.

gVisor powers GKE Sandbox and has been used across Google Cloud products. The trade-off is overhead on system-call-heavy workloads and incomplete compatibility for some low-level software.

Sources

  1. gvisor.dev/docs/

Cite this page

Agent Sandboxes. (2026). What is gVisor?. agentsandboxes.org. Last reviewed November 8, 2026. https://agentsandboxes.org/glossary/gvisor/

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