Running Data Agents with Tenki and Hotdata

Data agents need two things: somewhere safe to run code, and somewhere to keep and query data. Tenki gives them an isolated Linux sandbox, and Hotdata gives them a database they can query from inside it.

Tenki’s integration walkthrough shows how the two fit together. An agent runs its tools and scripts in Tenki, queries data in Hotdata, and uses what it finds to decide its next step.

A separate environment for each task

Tenki runs each sandbox as a hardware-isolated Linux VM. You can start from a custom image with your dependencies already installed, and control everything through Tenki's SDKs or CLI. Inside the sandbox, an agent is free to install packages, edit files, and run code.

On the Hotdata side, each investigation gets its own database for source data, working tables, and query results. The agent can switch between SQL and Python as it goes, querying a dataset, digging into the results with a script, and saving what it finds along the way.

The sandbox and the database don't have to live and die together. When an analysis is done, you can shut down the sandbox and keep the database around for review or follow-up work.

Using Hotdata in a Tenki sandbox

Tenki's tenki/hotdata image already has the Hotdata CLI installed. Start a sandbox from it and pass in your Hotdata API key:

tenki sandbox create --image tenki/hotdata:stable \
  --env "HOTDATA_API_KEY=$HOTDATA_API_KEY" --name hotdata-demo

Run the smoke test to make sure everything is set up:

tenki sandbox exec --session hotdata-demo -- hotdata-smoke

Then create a database for the task. --if-not-exists reuses the same database if you run this again, and --expires-at 1h deletes it after an hour:

tenki sandbox exec --session hotdata-demo -- \
  hotdata databases create --name hotdata-demo --if-not-exists --expires-at 1h

See the Hotdata CLI reference and Tenki's CLI reference for more options.

Try it out

The easiest way to start is with a single agent, one sandbox, and one database. Run an analysis, keep the queries and results, and shut the sandbox down when you're done.

For the full setup, see Tenki’s Hotdata walkthrough.