Container Days Singapore Trip and Highlights

I just got back from Singapore, and it was one of the busiest and most fun trips I have had this year. In five days I ran two speaking activity (1 workshop + 1 talk), organised a Meetup with ThoughtWorks, spent two days at the Docker booth, and met a lot of developers who are thinking hard about how to use AI coding agents safely. Here is a quick look at how the week went.

Day 1 (26 Oct): Flying in

I flew Singapore Airlines from Bengaluru on 26 October. It's just 4.5 hours journey. Smooth flight, good food, and I landed with enough time to settle in before the conference started.

I stayed at PARKROYAL COLLECTION, and I have to say, the hotel itself was a highlight. It is a huge building with a tall open atrium full of plants, wooden screens and a big sweeping staircase in the middle. My room was on the 12th floor, and every time I walked out to the corridor, I got this view looking down into the garden.

The workshop at Suntec City

ContainerDays Singapore was held at Suntec City, one of the best known convention centres in the city. I ran a hands-on workshop there for around 40 to 45 developers, and the room was full and engaged from start to finish. Lots of hands went up, and lots of good questions came in.

The workshop was called "Run Fast Without Running Wild". The idea is simple: AI coding agents are fast and useful, but when you let one loose on your laptop with no limits, it can read your .env file, see your keys, and run commands nobody approved. I started with a few real "horror stories" of agents going wrong, and then showed how Docker Sandboxes (sbx) put the agent inside a microVM so the damage it can do stays small.

After the talk, everyone worked through the labs right in their browser, with no setup needed. The labs followed five steps:

• Contain: Let an agent containerise a real app, see what it can reach on your host, then move it into a microVM sandbox.
• Control: Choose a network policy, add allow and deny rules, and read the policy log to see what the agent tried to do.
• Choice: Give the sandboxed agent access to Docker Hardened Images (DHI), first as an MCP server and then as a kit.
• Capacity: Define a sandbox once in sbxenv.yaml and share it like code, so every developer on the team gets the same setup.
• Coordinate: Run two agents on the same project, a developer and a reviewer, each in its own sandbox, while you stay the one making the final call.

This diagram sums up the setup we built in the session. The agent gets full permissions inside the microVM, but every file it touches, every network call it makes and every MCP tool it uses goes through a governance layer. The result was a container image built on dhi.io/node with zero known CVEs, an SBOM attached, signed, and running as non-root.

You can find the slides and labs here: containerdays.dockerworkshop.com

Days 2 and 3 (27 and 28 Oct): At the Docker booth

On 27 and 28 October I joined my teammates Oleg and Martin at the Docker booth. Our banner said "Your agents need rules", and that line started a lot of conversations. Many people stopped by to ask how sandboxing works, how it is different from just running an agent in a container, and how to control what an agent can reach on the network.

Booth days are tiring, but they are where you learn what developers actually care about. The common theme this year was clear: teams want to use AI agents, but they want guardrails first.

Day 4 (29 Oct): Workshop with Thoughtworks

On 29 October, I ran a second session together with the Thoughtworks team in Singapore. This one went deeper into governance: how to define your rules for AI coding agents once and enforce them everywhere using Docker Sandboxes. It was great to see a different crowd, many from enterprise teams, ask very practical questions about policy, audit logs and rollout.

A big thank you to the Thoughtworks team for hosting and for being such great partners.

Day 5 (30 Oct): City Tour and Back to Bengaluru

Between the conference days and my flight home, I made time to see a bit of the city along with Docker Captain and colleague Sujay Pillai.

Singapore is small, clean and easy to get around, so even a few hours go a long way.

Did you know? Quick facts about Singapore:

1. No tipping at the airport. Changi Airport has a no-tipping policy for its staff.
2. Tipping is not expected anywhere. Most restaurants and hotels already add a 10% service charge to the bill.
3. Tolls are collected automatically. Singapore's Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) system charges cars as they drive under gantries. There are no toll booths and no stopping.
4. Cars are very expensive. Import taxes are high, and you also need a Certificate of Entitlement (COE) just to own a car. The COE alone can cost more than the car itself.
5. Chewing gum is banned. Since 1992 you can't make, import or sell chewing gum. The only exception is gum for medical or dental use, bought from a pharmacy.
6. It's one of the cleanest cities in the world. Fines for littering are strict and enforced.
7. Gardens by the Bay is built on land taken from the sea. The whole Marina Bay area was built by filling in the sea.
8. The country keeps growing. Land reclamation has made Singapore about 25% bigger since it became independent in 1965.
9. It has four official languages. They are English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil. The national anthem is sung in Malay.
10. The airport has a giant indoor waterfall. The Rain Vortex at Jewel Changi is about 40 metres tall, the tallest indoor waterfall in the world.
11. It's home to the world's first night zoo. The Night Safari opened in 1994 and is only open after dark.

I started right where the conference was. Suntec City is a group of five office towers built around a convention centre and a big shopping mall. The towers are arranged to look like the fingers of a hand, and in the "palm" sits the Fountain of Wealth, a huge bronze ring that was once listed by Guinness World Records as the largest fountain in the world. Locals say walking around it three times brings good luck.

Next was Orchard Road, Singapore's most famous shopping street. It runs for more than two kilometres and is lined with malls, hotels and trees on both sides. The holiday decorations were already going up when I passed through, and I enjoyed the view from the top deck of the Big Bus.

Then came the view everyone knows: Marina Bay Sands. Its three hotel towers are joined at the top by the SkyPark, which looks like a ship resting on the roof. In front of it is the ArtScience Museum, shaped like a lotus flower, sitting right on the edge of the bay.

I ended at Gardens by the Bay, just behind Marina Bay Sands. The Supertrees are tall steel structures covered in real plants, and at night they light up in blue, green and purple. Standing under them in the evening was one of my favourite moments of the whole trip.

On 30 October I flew back home to Bengaluru, tired but very happy.

What I took away

• Developers are excited about AI coding agents, but security and control are now the first question, not the last.
• Hands-on labs work. People remember what they type, not what they see on a slide.
• Singapore has a strong and curious cloud native community, and I hope to come back soon.

Thanks to the ContainerDays organisers, everyone who joined the workshops, everyone who stopped by the booth, and the Docker and Thoughtworks teams. See you at the next one!