Environments and Sandbox
What this is
Hookshot™ supports linking two workspaces together as a production and sandbox pair. The sandbox is a dedicated workspace where you can build and test Protege configurations before promoting them to production.
When to use it
Use environments when you want to:
Test Protege configurations in an isolated workspace before deploying to production
Make changes to behavior prompts, tool access, or schedules without affecting live workflows
Promote tested configurations from sandbox to production with a single action
What you need first
A production workspace that is already bootstrapped
Contact Protege AI support ([email protected]) to set up a sandbox workspace linked to your production workspace
How environments work
Production and sandbox pairing
An environment link pairs exactly one production workspace with one sandbox workspace. Each workspace can only belong to one pair.
Purpose
Live workflows and real data
Testing and staging configurations
Proteges
Running and serving events
Copies promoted from production, or new configurations being tested
Credentials
Live connections to external services
Can use separate or shared connections
People and teams
Managed directly
Inherited from production (read-only)
Switching between environments
When your workspace is part of an environment pair, the sidebar workspace picker shows both workspaces. The sandbox entry is labeled with Sandbox so you can distinguish it from production at a glance.
Select the sandbox workspace to work on test configurations. Select the production workspace to manage live workflows.
Protege promotion
How promotion works
Promotion copies a Protege's configuration from the sandbox to the linked production workspace. The following fields are promoted:
Name and description
Behavior prompt (system prompt)
Model selection
Tool access grants
Engine configuration
Schedule definitions
What is not promoted
The following are kept separate and are not overwritten during promotion:
Integration credentials and connections
Webhook secrets and provider resource IDs
Run history and feed history
Trigger event history
This means promoting a sandbox Protege to production preserves the production Protege's live connections and run data.
Drift detection
If a production Protege is edited directly outside of promotion, it is marked as drifted. The next promotion will warn about the drift and overwrite the changed configuration fields. This helps you understand when manual changes to production may be lost.
Sandbox workspace restrictions
Because the sandbox inherits administration from its linked production workspace, the following restrictions apply:
People: You cannot invite new people to the sandbox. Membership is inherited from the production workspace's owners and admins.
Teams: You cannot create, rename, or delete teams in the sandbox. The default team and its membership mirror the production workspace.
SE access: SE access must be provisioned separately in each environment. Granting SE access in the production workspace does not grant it in the sandbox, and vice versa.
See Teams and People for more on sandbox restrictions for team and people management, and Solutions Engineering Access for SE access across environments.
How to verify
The workspace picker shows both production and sandbox, with the sandbox clearly labeled
Promoting a sandbox Protege updates the production Protege's configuration without affecting its credentials or history
Changes made directly to a production Protege are flagged as drift on the next promotion
Common failures
Editing a production Protege directly instead of making changes in the sandbox and promoting
Assuming SE access in one environment grants access to the other
Expecting promotion to copy credentials or connection state from sandbox to production
Forgetting that sandbox team and people changes are not allowed — they must be made in the production workspace
Next step
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