Sandbox Studio v1.2.0 is available now!
Today we’re excited to announce the release of Sandbox Studio 1.2.0.
This release focuses on one thing our customers have consistently asked for: making Sandbox Studio easier to integrate into the rest of their organisation.
Whether you want to automate account requests, connect to your existing platforms, work with AI assistants, or customise how accounts are prepared and cleaned up, this release gives you significantly more flexibility than ever before.
Alongside these major integration features, we’ve also introduced better visibility into account lifecycle operations, more control over cleanup, and new options for managing cost information.
As always, many of these improvements come directly from customer feedback. Thank you to everyone who has shared ideas and helped shape this release.
API integration
One of our most requested features has been the ability to integrate Sandbox Studio into existing workflows and internal platforms.
Sandbox Studio now includes a comprehensive REST API that allows you to perform almost everything you can do through the user interface programmatically.
Whether you’re building your own self-service portal, integrating with an internal platform, or automating account management, the API gives you complete control.
Every user can now generate and manage their own API keys directly from the interface.
We’ve also included interactive API documentation within Sandbox Studio, allowing you to:
- Browse every available endpoint
- View request and response formats
- Test API calls directly from your browser
- Generate API keys for your own integrations
This makes it much easier to start building integrations without needing external tools or documentation.
Introducing the Sandbox Studio MCP Server
As AI-powered development tools become part of everyday workflows, we wanted Sandbox Studio to integrate naturally with them.
This release introduces the Sandbox Studio MCP (Model Context Protocol) Server.
The MCP Server allows AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor and Kiro to interact directly with Sandbox Studio on your behalf.
Once configured with your Sandbox Studio API key, you can use natural language to perform tasks such as:
- Request AWS accounts
- Create and manage account templates
- Check the status of events
- View account availability
- Manage sandbox environments
- Automate common administration tasks
- Manage nuke configuration
Instead of navigating multiple screens, you can simply ask your AI assistant to perform the task for you.
Configuration takes only a few minutes, and full setup instructions are available on our GitHub repository.
Event notifications with webhooks
Integration doesn’t stop with the API.
Sandbox Studio can now notify your own systems whenever important events occur.
Using Amazon SNS, you can subscribe to a wide range of lifecycle events, including:
- Account requests submitted
- Requests approved or rejected
- Accounts leased
- Accounts returned
- Cleanup completed
- Provisioning completed
These notifications can be connected to virtually any workflow.
For example, you might:
- Trigger an internal approval process
- Send notifications to Microsoft Teams or Slack
- Invoke an AWS Lambda function
- Update an external asset management system
- Synchronise data with another application
This makes it much easier to keep Sandbox Studio connected with the rest of your organisation.
More control over account cleanup
Keeping sandbox accounts clean is essential, but every organisation has slightly different requirements.
Previous releases introduced support for selecting different versions of AWS Nuke, including using your own fork.
This release goes much further.
You can now configure scripts to run before and after the cleanup process.
Pre-cleanup hooks allow you to perform tasks before AWS Nuke runs, while post-cleanup hooks execute after cleanup has completed.
This makes it possible to:
- Capture information before an account is reset
- Back up selected resources
- Export logs or audit information
- Perform additional cleanup steps
- Run organisation-specific automation
These hooks provide complete flexibility while allowing AWS Nuke to continue handling the resource cleanup process.
More flexible cost visibility
Different organisations have different approaches to showing AWS spending.
For many customers, particularly universities and training providers, it’s important for users to understand when they’re approaching their spending limits without necessarily exposing the actual dollar value.
Administrators can now choose how budget information is presented to users.
This allows organisations to encourage responsible usage while controlling how much financial information is exposed.
Better visibility into account lifecycle operations
Provisioning resources and cleaning up AWS accounts can sometimes take several minutes.
If something doesn’t go as expected, diagnosing the problem shouldn’t require digging through external logs.
We’ve improved visibility throughout the account lifecycle by surfacing more operational information directly within the Sandbox Studio interface.
Administrators can now see detailed progress, log messages and error information for provisioning and cleanup operations.
This makes it much easier to:
- Understand what’s happening behind the scenes
- Diagnose failures more quickly
- Reduce troubleshooting time
- Resolve issues without leaving the application
Built with your feedback
Every major feature in this release started as a conversation with customers.
We’ve focused on making Sandbox Studio easier to integrate, easier to automate, and easier to customise for the way your organisation already works.
Whether you’re building internal portals, connecting external systems, automating administration, or using AI to manage your environments, Sandbox Studio now provides significantly more ways to fit into your existing workflows.
We’re always looking for feedback and new ideas, so if there’s something you’d like to see in a future release, we’d love to hear from you.
What’s next
Sandbox Studio 1.2.0 is a major step towards making sandbox environments fully programmable and easier to integrate with modern development workflows.
With a comprehensive API, an MCP Server for AI assistants, webhook support, advanced cleanup automation, improved lifecycle visibility, and more flexible cost reporting, this release gives organisations more control than ever over how they manage AWS sandbox environments.
We can’t wait to see what you build with it.
Happy provisioning! 🚀