agentvpn

name	agentvpn
description	Agent VPN — route traffic through Gen Digital's global VPN exit nodes via per-country Docker containers, with an embedded SOCKS5 proxy for routing browsers (Chrome) or any SOCKS-aware tool. Use this skill when told to use a VPN, connect from a specific country, browse from a specific region, compare geo-localized content, run CLI tools (curl, wget, scrapers) from a specific region, or access region-restricted sites.
license	Apache-2.0
compatibility	Requires Docker on a Linux host with --cap-add=NET_ADMIN and /dev/net/tun, plus a UDID provisioned at https://ai.gendigital.com/agentvpn.

Agent VPN

Docker-based VPN that routes traffic through WireGuard tunnels to Gen Digital's global exit nodes. The tunnel runs inside a Docker container — only traffic from inside that container goes through the VPN. The host network is unaffected.

Each VPN connection = one Docker container named vpn-<location> (e.g. vpn-tokyo, vpn-paris). To use several regions at once, follow Recipe: Multiple Locations at Once.

Policy: Treat tunnels as ephemeral. Start a tunnel only for the duration of your task, then shut it down immediately. Tunnels start in seconds, so there is no benefit to leaving them running when idle.

Prerequisites

• Docker with --cap-add=NET_ADMIN and /dev/net/tun available (standard on Linux hosts; check with ls /dev/net/tun).
• A UDID provisioned by Agent VPN — see Provisioning the UDID below for where to get one and how to make it available to every recipe. The UDID alone is sufficient for auth; no separate ELYSIUM_AUTH_CLIENT_KEY is required.

Defaults compiled into nvpn-client (rarely overridden):

• VPN_SERVICE_BASE_URL=https://api.se-platform.com
• ELYSIUM_AUTH_CLIENT_NAME=sprinkler

Provisioning the UDID

Every recipe below assumes $AGENTVPN_UDID is set in the shell environment. Set it up once per host, then reuse it from every session.

Where to get a fresh UDID. Sign up at https://ai.gendigital.com/agentvpn; the UDID is emailed to the address you register with. The value will look like U1.<uuid>.<region>.<64-hex-token>. (If your org already manages Gen VPN provisioning internally, ask whoever owns it instead — but the linked URL is the public path.)

Where to store it on the host. Use ~/.config/agentvpn/udid (mode 0600, single line, no trailing newline issues — the value is a single token):

mkdir -p ~/.config/agentvpn
umask 077
printf '%s' 'U1.xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx.us.<64-hex>' \
  > ~/.config/agentvpn/udid
chmod 600 ~/.config/agentvpn/udid

How to load it into the shell. Every recipe expects the env var, not the file path:

export AGENTVPN_UDID=$(cat ~/.config/agentvpn/udid)

Add this to your shell's startup (~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc) if you use the skill regularly.

Preflight check. Recipes will silently send an empty UDID to Elysium and get back a confusing 401 if the var is unset. Guard against it:

[ -n "${AGENTVPN_UDID:-}" ] || { echo "AGENTVPN_UDID is not set — see SKILL.md → Provisioning the UDID"; exit 1; }

Hygiene rules — never violate.

• Never echo "$AGENTVPN_UDID" into a shared log, ticket, or chat. The UDID is a long-lived bearer credential; treat it like a password.
• Never commit it to git (this includes a populated config.template, a populated assets/sample-config, or a .env file under version control).
• Never docker push an image that was built with the UDID baked into config.template — the value is in the image filesystem and any registry you push to can read it.
• Never type the literal UDID on the command line (-e UDID=U1.actual-value...) — it lands in shell history. Always reference the env var (-e UDID="$AGENTVPN_UDID"); shell history records the variable name, not the expanded value. Be aware that set -x, script, and terminal recordings do expand it.

Location format

Servers are selected by either a city name (e.g. Tokyo, Palo Alto, Frankfurt) or a location key (e.g. JP-40-TOKYO, DE-1-FRANKFURT); the entrypoint auto-detects the format from the value's shape. There is no per-server IP/public-key inventory to maintain — always discover the current set with locations (Step 2 below) rather than guessing. Names are case-sensitive (Tokyo works, tokyo does not) and many city names contain spaces, so always quote VPN_LOCATION (e.g. "Palo Alto", "New York").

Recipe: VPN to a Location and Do Something

The most common use case. Steps below use the default daemon entrypoint command (connects, brings up wg0, starts SOCKS5 on 1080, health-checks, reconnects). For other modes (connect, locations, status, stop), see "Entrypoint Commands" near the bottom of this file.

Step 1: Build the image (first time only)

Check if the image exists:

docker images agentvpn --format '{{.Repository}}:{{.Tag}}'

If no output (or outdated), rebuild from the skill's root directory (the one containing this SKILL.md and the Dockerfile):

docker build -t agentvpn .

The build pulls wireguard-go + microsocks from upstream sources, compiles the pi-ml-scan ML scanner from Rust, and installs the bundled nvpn-client deb from data/debs/.

Step 2: Discover available locations

--locations queries the discovery service and requires a valid UDID:

docker run --rm -e UDID="$AGENTVPN_UDID" agentvpn locations

Format options (passed through to nvpn-client --locations):

# Default: city names
docker run --rm -e UDID="$AGENTVPN_UDID" agentvpn locations

# Location keys (the values you actually pass to --location=)
docker run --rm -e UDID="$AGENTVPN_UDID" \
  agentvpn locations --format=location-key

# JSON
docker run --rm -e UDID="$AGENTVPN_UDID" \
  agentvpn locations --json

Pick a value (city name like Tokyo or location key like JP-40-TOKYO) — that's what you pass as VPN_LOCATION. See "Location format" above for the case-sensitivity and quoting rules.

To narrow a long list to a specific region:

docker run --rm -e UDID="$AGENTVPN_UDID" agentvpn locations | grep -i japan

Step 3: Check for an existing container for that location

docker ps -a --filter name=vpn-tokyo --format '{{.Names}} {{.Status}}'

• If already running and you still need it → skip to Step 5, reuse it.
• If exists but stopped → remove first: docker rm vpn-tokyo
• If not found → continue to Step 4.

Step 4: Start the VPN container

docker run -d --name vpn-tokyo \
  --cap-add=NET_ADMIN --device=/dev/net/tun \
  -e UDID="$AGENTVPN_UDID" \
  -e VPN_LOCATION="Tokyo" \
  agentvpn daemon

Container name and VPN_LOCATION should agree (lowercase the location for the container name, since Docker names must be lowercase).

If you also want host-side SOCKS5 access (e.g. for Chrome), add -p 127.0.0.1::1080 — see Recipe: Browser through VPN for why and how to look up the assigned host port. Skip this for the default docker exec-based workflow.

Wait for the tunnel to come up before sending traffic. The entrypoint touches /var/run/vpn-up only after every prerequisite (auth, wg-quick, SOCKS5) succeeded; scripts/wait-for-vpn.sh polls that flag, dumps docker logs and exits non-zero on timeout or container exit:

./scripts/wait-for-vpn.sh vpn-tokyo || exit 1

If the container exits before the flag appears, the script surfaces the failure via docker logs (bad UDID, network down, etc.) and the entrypoint will have exited non-zero after MAX_INITIAL_CONNECT_ATTEMPTS (default 10), so the failure is also visible in docker ps -a. For deeper diagnosis (env-var override didn't land, auth failed, etc.) see references/troubleshooting.md.

Step 5: Run commands through the VPN

Use docker exec to run commands inside the container. All traffic from inside the container exits through the VPN.

docker exec vpn-tokyo curl -s -m 10 http://ip-api.com/json

docker exec vpn-tokyo curl -s -m 20 -A "Mozilla/5.0" "https://example.com"

For host-side browsers / SOCKS-aware tools, see Recipe: Browser through VPN.

Step 6: Stop and clean up when done (required)

docker stop vpn-tokyo && docker rm vpn-tokyo

Quick one-liner for any location: docker stop vpn-<location> && docker rm vpn-<location>

Always use docker stop, never docker kill. The entrypoint has signal traps that cleanly tear down the tunnel and the SOCKS5 proxy. Leaving tunnels running is discouraged.

Recipe: Browser through VPN

Each vpn-<location> container also runs microsocks (a single-purpose SOCKS5 server) on port 1080 inside the container, started after the WireGuard tunnel is up so traffic can never leak via the host network.

To use it from the host, publish the container port to a host port. Use dynamic port assignment (-p 127.0.0.1::1080) so multiple location containers can run simultaneously without colliding on host port 1080.

Step 1. Start the container with a dynamic SOCKS5 host port, bound to localhost only:

docker run -d --name vpn-tokyo \
  --cap-add=NET_ADMIN --device=/dev/net/tun \
  -p 127.0.0.1::1080 \
  -e UDID="$AGENTVPN_UDID" \
  -e VPN_LOCATION="Tokyo" \
  agentvpn daemon

The double colon (-p 127.0.0.1::1080) tells Docker to pick a free host port. Bind to 127.0.0.1 so the proxy isn't reachable from your LAN.

Step 2. Look up the assigned host port:

SOCKS_PORT=$(docker port vpn-tokyo 1080 | head -1 | awk -F: '{print $NF}')
echo "vpn-tokyo SOCKS5: 127.0.0.1:$SOCKS_PORT"

Step 3. Point Chrome at it. Use a dedicated --user-data-dir per location so cookies don't bleed between regions, and the extra flags below close common leak paths:

google-chrome \
  --user-data-dir="$HOME/.config/google-chrome/vpn-tokyo" \
  --proxy-server="socks5://127.0.0.1:$SOCKS_PORT" \
  --host-resolver-rules="MAP * ~NOTFOUND , EXCLUDE 127.0.0.1" \
  --disable-quic \
  --webrtc-ip-handling-policy=disable_non_proxied_udp

Why each flag matters:

• --proxy-server — sends HTTP/S through the VPN container.
• --host-resolver-rules — forces Chrome to do DNS via the proxy. Without this, Chrome resolves names via your host's resolver and you leak which sites you're browsing.
• --disable-quic — QUIC runs over UDP and SOCKS5 only carries TCP, so QUIC silently bypasses the proxy.
• --webrtc-ip-handling-policy=disable_non_proxied_udp — prevents WebRTC from leaking your real IP via STUN.

Switching location requires a Chrome restart (relaunch with a different --user-data-dir and the new container's port). This is intentional: it gives each location its own cookie jar / session.

For non-browser SOCKS-aware tools:

SOCKS_PORT=$(docker port vpn-tokyo 1080 | head -1 | awk -F: '{print $NF}')
curl --socks5-hostname 127.0.0.1:$SOCKS_PORT https://ip-api.com/json

The -hostname form makes curl resolve via the proxy too (avoids DNS leak).

Concurrent SOCKS5 across multiple locations. Because each container gets its own dynamic host port, you can run several at once and look each up independently:

for c in tokyo paris london; do
  port=$(docker port vpn-$c 1080 | head -1 | awk -F: '{print $NF}')
  echo "vpn-$c → 127.0.0.1:$port"
done

If you skip -p 127.0.0.1::1080 entirely, microsocks still runs but is reachable only via docker exec (or from another container on the same Docker network) — which is fine for the default docker exec vpn-<location> curl ... workflow.

Recipe: Multiple Locations at Once

Start a separate container per location. Each runs independently:

docker run -d --name vpn-frankfurt --cap-add=NET_ADMIN --device=/dev/net/tun \
  -e UDID="$AGENTVPN_UDID" -e VPN_LOCATION="Frankfurt" \
  agentvpn daemon

docker run -d --name vpn-tokyo --cap-add=NET_ADMIN --device=/dev/net/tun \
  -e UDID="$AGENTVPN_UDID" -e VPN_LOCATION="Tokyo" \
  agentvpn daemon

Wait for both, then use them:

./scripts/wait-for-vpn.sh vpn-frankfurt && \
  ./scripts/wait-for-vpn.sh vpn-tokyo || exit 1
docker exec vpn-frankfurt curl -s -m 10 http://ip-api.com/json
docker exec vpn-tokyo     curl -s -m 10 http://ip-api.com/json

Always clean up immediately after use. Example:

docker stop vpn-frankfurt vpn-tokyo && docker rm vpn-frankfurt vpn-tokyo

Recipe: Safe Fetch with Prompt Injection Scanning

When an AI agent fetches web content through the VPN, the response may contain prompt injection (PI) attacks — hidden instructions designed to hijack the agent. The safefetch command wraps curl with automatic PI scanning so malicious content is blocked before it reaches the agent.

Use safefetch instead of raw curl whenever an AI agent will process the response. Raw curl via docker exec remains available as an escape hatch for cases where you need unfiltered content.

Basic usage

docker exec vpn-tokyo safefetch https://example.com/api/data

Extra curl options are passed through after the URL:

docker exec vpn-tokyo safefetch https://example.com -H "Accept: application/json"

Exit codes

• 0 — content is clean; written to stdout
• 77 — prompt injection detected; content suppressed, warning on stderr
• 1 — fetch error (curl failed, URL unreachable, etc.)

Handling results in agent workflows

output=$(docker exec vpn-tokyo safefetch https://example.com 2>/tmp/safefetch-err)
rc=$?
if [ "$rc" -eq 77 ]; then
    echo "WARNING: PI detected, content blocked" >&2
    cat /tmp/safefetch-err >&2
elif [ "$rc" -ne 0 ]; then
    echo "Fetch failed" >&2
fi

Audit log

Every safefetch call is logged to /var/log/safefetch.log inside the container. Each line records: timestamp, URL, HTTP status, content length, and scan result (clean, blocked, or error).

View the log:

docker exec vpn-tokyo auditlog

Tail recent entries:

docker exec vpn-tokyo auditlog -n 5

Configuring the timeout

The default curl timeout for safefetch is 30 seconds. Override via SAFEFETCH_TIMEOUT:

docker run -d --name vpn-tokyo \
  --cap-add=NET_ADMIN --device=/dev/net/tun \
  -e UDID="$AGENTVPN_UDID" \
  -e VPN_LOCATION="Tokyo" \
  -e SAFEFETCH_TIMEOUT=60 \
  agentvpn daemon

Detection approach

safefetch uses a two-tier prompt injection scanner:

1. Tier 1 — Heuristic (regex): Fast regex scan (pi-scan.sh) against a curated pattern file (pi-patterns.txt) covering instruction override, role assumption, safety bypass, system prompt extraction, and encoding evasion attempts. Runs in ~0ms.

2. Tier 2 — ML inference: If heuristic passes, content is classified by a BERT-based PI model (pi-ml-scan binary) using tract-onnx pure-Rust inference. The model (BertForSequenceClassification, 6 layers, hidden=384, INT8 ONNX, ~22 MB) uses 512-token sliding-window chunking with 128-token overlap for long content. Block threshold: 0.99. Runs in ~50-200ms.

Both tiers are fail-open: if the pattern file is missing, the ML binary isn't found, or inference errors occur, content passes through unblocked. The ML tier can be disabled by setting PI_ML_ENABLED=0 in the container environment.

Security: Kill Switch and DNS Leak Prevention

The container enforces a network-level kill switch via iptables. Once the WireGuard tunnel is up, firewall rules block all egress traffic except:

• Traffic through the wg0 tunnel interface
• UDP to the WireGuard endpoint (tunnel maintenance)
• DNS only to the tunnel's DNS server

If wg0 goes down, all traffic is blocked — there is no fallback to the container's default route (Docker bridge to host network). This prevents IP leaks during the window between a tunnel drop and the health-check reconnect.

DNS leak prevention is also enforced at the firewall level: outbound port 53 (UDP/TCP) is only permitted to the tunnel DNS server. A process inside the container cannot bypass this by hardcoding an external DNS resolver.

The kill switch activates automatically — no configuration needed. It is torn down during reconnects (so the client can reach Elysium for re-authentication) and re-established after each successful tunnel setup.

Critical safety rules

These are constraints the step-by-step recipes don't otherwise force on you. Violating any of them can leak the UDID, leak traffic via the host, or break unrelated VPNs.

• NEVER push the built image to any registry. A populated UDID (whether baked into config.template before build or written by -e UDID=... at run time) lives in the image filesystem; docker push exfiltrates it. Build locally, use locally. (The source repo is safe — committed config.template is placeholders only.)
• Never use --network=host. It leaks WireGuard routes onto the host and breaks other VPNs / SSH.
• Never share a vpn-* container's network namespace with an untrusted container (--network=container:vpn-tokyo, or co-locating on the same user-defined Docker network). microsocks listens on 0.0.0.0:1080 inside the container, with no auth — any sibling container in that namespace gets a free VPN exit. -p 127.0.0.1::1080 only restricts host-side access; it does nothing here.
• The VPN only works inside the container. curl on the host does not go through it. Always docker exec <container> <command>, or use the SOCKS5 path from "Recipe: Browser through VPN".
• Use safefetch for AI agent workflows. When an AI agent will process fetched web content, use docker exec <name> safefetch <url> instead of raw curl. This scans for prompt injection attacks before content reaches the agent. Raw curl remains available when unfiltered access is needed.
• If nvpn-client --connect fails, the upstream may be down or your UDID may be wrong/expired. Check docker logs <name> and docker exec <name> tail /var/log/nvpn-client/nvpn-client.log, then see references/troubleshooting.md. As of nvpn-client 0.9.x, the UDID alone is sufficient — a stale ELYSIUM_AUTH_CLIENT_KEY will break auth.

Host-side cleanup (rare)

The per-container teardown in Step 6 / "Recipe: Multiple Locations at Once" is enough for normal use. Only if wg0 or its policy routes have leaked onto the host (e.g. a container was killed with SIGKILL and other VPNs/SSH sessions broke), run:

sudo ./scripts/vpn-cleanup.sh

See references/troubleshooting.md → "OpenVPN / Other VPN Broken After Running Agent VPN" for full diagnosis.

Entrypoint Commands

• daemon — Persistent service mode (default). Connects, stays alive, auto-reconnects with exponential backoff (10s → 300s). Exits non-zero after MAX_INITIAL_CONNECT_ATTEMPTS (default 10) consecutive failures on the first connect, so a bad UDID surfaces as Exited(1) instead of an "Up" container silently leaking via the host network.
• connect — One-shot: authenticate, bring up tunnel, print egress IP, then exit.
• locations — Pass through to nvpn-client --locations (extra args supported, e.g. locations --format=json).
• safefetch — Fetch a URL through the VPN with prompt injection scanning. Extra args after the URL are passed to curl. Exit codes: 0 = clean, 77 = PI detected, 1 = fetch error.
• auditlog — Dump the safefetch audit log (/var/log/safefetch.log). Extra args are passed to tail (e.g. auditlog -n 10).
• status — Show wg show wg0 + tail of /var/log/nvpn-client/nvpn-client.log.
• stop — Bring down wg0 + microsocks cleanly.

Tunnel-ready signal. While the tunnel is fully up the entrypoint maintains a flag file at /var/run/vpn-up inside the container. Recipes can use docker exec <name> test -e /var/run/vpn-up as a precondition to avoid sending traffic before the tunnel is ready (which would fail open via the host network on some misconfigurations).

Bundled resources

• data/pi-patterns.txt — Prompt injection heuristic regex patterns used by pi-scan.sh and safefetch. Curated from public PI research (OWASP LLM Top 10, academic adversarial prompt datasets).
• scripts/pi-scan.sh — In-container two-tier PI scanner (heuristic + ML). Reads stdin, checks both tiers, exits 0 (clean) or 77 (PI detected). Fail-open on errors.
• scripts/wait-for-vpn.sh — Poll /var/run/vpn-up in a container; exits non-zero with docker logs on timeout or container exit. Use as a precondition before sending traffic.
• scripts/vpn-cleanup.sh — Host-side cleanup for leaked wg0 interface and policy routes (run if other VPNs break after a docker kill).
• tools/pi-ml-scan/ — Rust project for the ML-based PI scanner. Uses tract-onnx (pure Rust ONNX inference) with a BERT-based model (6 layers, hidden=384, INT8 ONNX, ~22 MB). Built as a static musl binary in the Docker multi-stage build.
• tools/pi-ml-scan/download-assets.sh — Copies model assets from a local Sage installation (~/.sage/models/v1/pi-model/). Run once after cloning, before cargo build.
• tests/test-pi-scan.sh — Test suite for the two-tier PI scanner (21 cases: 17 heuristic + 4 ML integration tests).

Further reading

Loaded on demand — read these only when you hit a case the recipes above don't cover:

• references/architecture.md — components (nvpn-client, wireguard-go, microsocks), entrypoint responsibilities, full env-var table, connection flow.
• references/troubleshooting.md — symptoms → fixes for auth, DNS, routing, and host-side leaks.
• references/upgrading-nvpn-client.md — bumping the bundled deb in data/debs/.
• assets/sample-config.example — template for the optional bind-mount config workflow (copy to assets/sample-config, which is gitignored).