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What’s the difference between running natively and in a container, really?

On Linux, not much. On a Mac, quite a bit.

Like mostly apple services such as iMessage? I’m asking honestly, not snarky! I don’t think performance is a big factor for agentic hyjinx.

Yes, anything Apple platform development

Apple APIs yes. But there’s also an overhead when running containers like docker on Mac (and windows). Only Linux has near-zero overhead.

Right, because on Mac (and windows) you’re running a VM rather than just setting up kernel namespaces. How cpu and network intensive are these pets? Or is it more of a principle thing, which I totally understand?

I prefer containerization because it gives me a repeatable environment that I know works, where on my system things can change as the os updates and applications evolve.

But I can understand the benefit of sandboxing for sure! Thank you.

very roughly: not that bad but not zero. I see docker taking a continuous 1/2% CPU on MacOS when running its host, where sandbox-exec or containers on linux are zero unless used.

If you prefer containers, use containers.

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