hort run

Run one command in a running sandbox, with no terminal, and exit with its status.

hort run <NAME> -- <COMMAND>...

Arguments:
  <NAME>        The sandbox to run the command in
  <COMMAND>...  The command and its arguments, taken verbatim after `--`

Options:
  -h, --help  Print help

Examples

hort run fix-login -- npm test           # run the tests, get their exit code
hort run fix-login -- ruff check .        # lint inside the sandbox
hort run fix-login -- sh -c 'echo hi'     # a shell one-liner

What it does

run is attach without a terminal. For a running sandbox it opens a new session that execs the command you named instead of a login shell, started in /workdir, inside the sandbox's namespaces. The command's own standard output and error come back on hort's, so a script or an orchestrator on your host can drive a box command by command and read each result.

Like attach, it never builds anything and checks only that the kernel allows user namespaces; it does not need pasta, git or the rootfs directory, because the sandbox is already running.

The environment of the session is the same one attach builds: HORT_SANDBOX and HORT_WORKTREE, HOME=/home/hort and the XDG_* directories under it, a standard PATH, the variables your agents declare in auth.env, and, if the sandbox runs an egress proxy, the proxy variables. Nothing else is inherited from your host environment.

No terminal is allocated. A command that ends is not a shell you type into, so run never asks the sandbox for a pty and never lends it yours. The command runs on hort's standard streams.

run records the time, the same as attach, so a box an orchestrator is driving command by command does not read as idle to hort prune --idle between two of them.

Exit status

hort exits with the exit status of the command: its own status when it exits, or 128 + signal when it is killed by a signal. So a command that failed inside the box is tellable from hort failing to open the box.

$ hort run fix-login -- sh -c 'exit 7'; echo $?
7

Messages

run reaches a live sandbox the same way attach does and refuses the same three states with the same messages: a name nothing knows, a sandbox that is not running, and a running sandbox whose container state is gone. See hort attach for each.