> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://developers.telnyx.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Isolation

Compute is isolated per agent; state is isolated per instance.

An agent's instances, one per conversation, run inside containers of the agent's code. Each instance lives in exactly one of them at a time: it is placed on first touch, may be relocated, and is addressed by name, never by location. Which instances share a container is the platform's choice, so no instance can rely on being alone and none can rely on company. Within a container, everything is shared by the instances in it:

* CPU, memory and the filesystem, including the writable working directory and `/tmp`.
* Environment variables, secrets and bindings.
* The code, and any module-level variable in it.
* The outbound network identity.

What each instance owns, and no other instance can see:

* Its storage and its SQL database.
* Its message log, event log and scheduled tasks.
* Its in-flight run, pending approvals and WebSocket connections.
* Its turn: one call at a time per instance, while different instances run in parallel.

There is no virtual machine per conversation. A conversation's isolation is logical, its own state and its own serialized calls, not a separate compute environment. Anything that executes in a container, a shell command, a file written to `/tmp`, a module-level cache, is visible to whichever other conversations of that agent share it, and gone when the instance moves; per-conversation compute is what the sandbox on the [Tools](/docs/agents/tools) roadmap is for.

| Agent Artifact | Runtime Artifact | Scope |
| - | - | - |
| The project, `agent.json` | One function, the entry point, and one actor type | The agent |
| `<conversation>` in the address | One instance of the actor type | The conversation |
| Secrets | The function's bindings | The agent, shared by every instance |
| The class and its dependencies | The actor type's code | The agent, shared by every instance |
| The memory profile | Agent Memory, outside the runtime, keyed by the profile (the caller's number on calls and texts, the sender's address on email, the conversation's name otherwise) | Across conversations |