# What OpenMetal does (/concepts/what-is-metal)



OpenMetal is a hosted platform that gives applications and agents one interface for compute across
multiple providers.

You describe requirements through one API. OpenMetal chooses eligible capacity, provisions it, records lifecycle operations, meters usage, and presents one billing relationship.

## Product model [#product-model]

* One organization owns projects, balances, members, and provider credentials.
* Each project has scoped API keys and sandboxes.
* Every provider resource maps back to one OpenMetal organization and project.
* The public API, TypeScript SDK, and CLI hide provider lifecycle differences.
* Managed capacity uses OpenMetal credits. BYOK capacity uses your provider account.

## Portable surface [#portable-surface]

OpenMetal provides sandbox lifecycle, asynchronous argv based processes, binary filesystem operations, and time limited HTTP endpoints.

It does not provide a new sandbox runtime. It also does not expose interactive terminals, streaming stdin, SSH, WebSocket, or a general connection API.

## Platform flow [#platform-flow]

```text
Application or agent
        |
        v
OpenMetal API -> operation -> selected compute provider
        |
        v
Sandbox state, events, and usage
```

The operation records mutation progress and completion. The sandbox reports the current resource
state.

<Cards>
  <Card title="Create a sandbox" href="/guides/create-sandbox" />

  <Card title="Understand routing" href="/concepts/routing" />

  <Card title="Understand operations" href="/concepts/operations" />
</Cards>