OpenShell Extensibility

[kirit93]

This roadmap items captures work being done to make OpenShell extendable. OpenShell will provide hooks to integrate software that adds value to OpenShell but may not fit within the core product surface area.

Summary of targeted extension points:

1. Proxy middleware (Sandbox egress middleware RFC #1733) - develop custom payload parsers that can analyze proxy egress traffic and make block/allow decisions that get passed back to the OpenShell proxy. The OpenShell proxy will still own all outbound connections in the event a connection needs to be terminated due to policy updates. OpenShell provides built-in L7 parsers that are generic in nature: REST, GraphQL (limited), JSON-RPC, MCP (built on top of JSON-RPC). For anything more specific or custom, develop a middleware, host it and load it as a target for egress traffic.
2. Gateway Interceptors (rfc-0010: gateway interceptors #1927) - intercept Gateway operations (user-facing APIs) and implement custom logic for modifying and/or validating payloads, settings, policies, providers or any primitive object type. The OpenShell database remains the system of record, interceptors allow modification and validation to any imperative API call to the Gateway. One use case example would be intercepting CreateSandbox() API calls and enforcing the shape of policies and providers that can be used with that a sandbox.