I created Drop because installing third-party programs under my main user account felt risky. A single compromised dependency could compromise my system—or, since I ship software, all users of my software. Containers and VMs help, but for local work they strip away the tools and configs that make me productive.

Drop is language independent, inspired by Python's virtualenv, but isolation is enforced. Each environment gets its own writable, disposable home dir, with selected configs mounted mostly read-only. Drop uses Linux namespaces (user, mount, network, PID, IPC, cgroup), requires no root, and optionally uses gVisor's user-space kernel for extra protection against host kernel exploits.

Drop lets you isolate coding agents—run them with --dangerously-skip-permissions while Drop enforces OS-level permissions. A hallucinated rm -rf ~ won't touch your real home. A prompt injection targeting ~/.ssh finds nothing. Localhost services are rejected. Third-party programs from PyPI, npm, or any source stay contained.

Unlike Docker/Podman, Drop uses your existing distribution, so every installed program is available. High-level TOML config exposes files, dirs, and local services. All environments share a base config. Drop drops all user namespace capabilities before executing, preventing privileged operations like bind mounts.

This is my 3rd submission; the first two drew no attention. Since then I added gVisor support and a project website.