Sandbox lifecycle
Starting, sleeping, waking, and deleting sandboxes.
A sandbox moves through a few simple states over its life: it starts up, runs while you work, sleeps when you step away, wakes when you come back, and can be deleted when you're done. You don't have to babysit any of this — Pikku Studio Cloud handles the busywork so you don't waste resources or do manual cleanup.
Horizontal pill-chain diagram of a sandbox's life: Create then Start (running) then Sleep (paused, saves resources) then Wake (running again) then Delete, with a plain-English note under each state.
The states, in plain English
| State | What it means |
|---|---|
| Running | The sandbox is awake and active. Your app is live inside it and the preview responds instantly. |
| Sleeping | The sandbox is paused after sitting idle, to save resources. Everything you did is preserved — it's just resting. |
| Waking | A sleeping sandbox coming back to life because you returned to it. Takes a moment, then it's running again. |
| Deleted | The sandbox is removed. Your committed work stays safe in your Git repo and your live app is unaffected. |
Why it sleeps
When you walk away and a sandbox sits idle, it automatically goes to sleep. Sleeping pauses the environment so it isn't burning resources doing nothing — but it preserves your state, so nothing you set up is lost. It's like closing your laptop lid instead of throwing the laptop away.
Why it's slow right after you come back
If you return to a sandbox that's been sleeping, your first action might take a moment to respond. That's the sandbox waking — coming back from its paused state. It's normal, it's brief, and it explains a preview that feels slow on the first click after a break. Give it a second and it's running at full speed again.
A slow first response after a break almost always just means your sandbox is waking up. It's not broken — see the App Preview for what to expect.
Deleting a sandbox — what you keep
Deleting sounds scary, so here's the reassurance up front:
- You won't lose your committed work. Anything you've committed lives in your Git repo, completely independent of the sandbox. Delete the sandbox and your code is still right there.
- Your live app is untouched. A sandbox is an isolated copy — deleting it has no effect whatsoever on production or your customers.
So deleting a sandbox is genuinely safe. It just clears away a throwaway environment you no longer need.
The takeaway
You can sleep sandboxes when idle and wake them instantly — no waste, no manual cleanup, and no risk to your committed work or your live app.
Where to go next
- Creating a sandbox — spin up a new one in a few clicks.
- What is a sandbox? — why sandboxes keep production completely safe.
- The App Preview — the live preview that runs inside a running sandbox.