Developer Sandbox

The PHX Terminal sandbox is the entry point for every third-party developer. It provides a secure, isolated environment where applications can be built and tested against the platform’s APIs without any risk to production systems or to sensitive client data. The sandbox is what makes an open ecosystem safe enough for the legal industry.

What developers can do

The sandbox supports the full development lifecycle for legal applications:

• Build applications against the platform’s APIs and SDKs
• Test integrations with platform services and other apps
• Simulate workflows in a realistic, production-like environment
• Validate compliance before submitting to the marketplace
• Access APIs through managed, scoped credentials
• Train AI models against approved, isolated data
• Deploy securely once an application passes review

stateDiagram-v2
  [*] --> Build
  Build: Build applications (APIs and SDKs)
  Build --> Test
  Test: Test integrations
  Test --> Simulate
  Simulate: Simulate workflows (production-like)
  Simulate --> Validate
  Validate: Validate compliance
  Validate --> Review
  Review: Submit to review
  Review --> Deploy: passes review
  Review --> Build: changes required
  Deploy: Deploy securely
  Deploy --> [*]: published to marketplace
  note right of Build
    Every state runs isolated —
    no access to other tenants
    or production data
  end note

The sandbox lifecycle runs build through deploy inside full isolation; an app only leaves the sandbox by passing review on its way to the marketplace.

Sandbox features

Feature	Purpose
Secure isolated environments	Each developer’s code runs contained, with no access to other tenants or production data
API libraries	Ready-to-use client libraries for the platform’s API surface
SDK access	Official SDKs for popular and platform-specific languages
Compliance enforcement	Policies and checks applied automatically within the sandbox
Testing frameworks	Tools to validate functionality, integrations, and workflows
Identity management tools	Scoped authentication and access control for development work

Realistic, yet safe

The sandbox is a controlled playground: a realistic environment for testing new software without compromising the stability of live systems. Faults are contained, suspicious behavior is confined, and untrusted code cannot reach the host platform or other tenants. This containment also mitigates software supply-chain risk — a third-party app’s bugs or vulnerabilities stay inside its isolated environment.

Note

This page covers the developer-facing capabilities of the sandbox. For the underlying isolation model — virtualization, containerization, multi-tenancy, data-isolation techniques, and the zero-data-retention policy — see Sandbox Security.

Compliance is built in, not bolted on

Because legal data is involved, the sandbox enforces compliance as a first-class part of development. Developers validate against the platform’s controls early, so that an application’s compliance posture is established before it ever reaches a firm. Combined with ecosystem governance, this ensures applications meet ecosystem-wide standards for security, data handling, and quality.

From sandbox to marketplace

Applications built and validated in the sandbox move through review and into the marketplace, where firms can discover, deploy, and subscribe to them. The sandbox is therefore both a build environment and the first gate in the platform’s quality and compliance pipeline.