# Roboto Studio at Vercel Ship 2026: meeting GOATs and building moats

ID: dev:4908577
Canonical HTML: https://dev.to/jonoroboto/vercel-ship-2026-agents-can-keep-their-files-between-runs-now-f31
Original source: https://dev.to/jonoroboto/vercel-ship-2026-agents-can-keep-their-files-between-runs-now-f31
Author: Jono Alford
Published: 2026-10-24T04:46:15Z
Edited: 2026-10-24T04:50:38Z
Source checked: 2026-10-26T04:00:25.839Z
Language: en
Directory publisher: Roboto Studio
Text: original source material.

## Original source text

*Originally posted on [the Roboto Studio blog](https://robotostudio.com/blog/vercel-ship-2026-san-francisco?utm_source=devto&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=vercel-ship-2026-recap&utm_content=devto-article-original).*

**TL;DR:** Vercel Ship 2026 was mostly agent launches. The one I'd look at first is Drives, which lets an agent in Vercel Sandbox keep its files between runs. We haven't used any of it yet, so this is what Vercel announced plus Vercel's own code. The full write-up, people and swag included, is [on our blog](https://robotostudio.com/blog/vercel-ship-2026-san-francisco?utm_source=devto&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=vercel-ship-2026-recap&utm_content=devto-article).

Sne and I were at the Palace of Fine Arts on October 15.

![The tall Corinthian columns of the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco against a clear blue sky](https://qxvqs298ldvynvwd.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/blog/vercel-ship-2026-san-francisco/palace-of-fine-arts.webp)
*The venue, Palace of Fine Arts*

There was a Mercedes F1 car on display and a Vercel Racing Club suit on a chrome mannequin. Vercel sweats the details, as usual.

![Jono and Sne wearing Ship badges that read Jonathan Alford, Founder, and Snehil Tripathi, Account Exec, Roboto Studio, in front of a Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 car](https://qxvqs298ldvynvwd.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/blog/vercel-ship-2026-san-francisco/jono-sne-f1-car.webp)
*Jono and Sne, Roboto Studio*

## Drives for Vercel Sandbox

Until now an agent in Vercel Sandbox started every task from scratch, so anything it cloned or built went in the bin when the sandbox stopped. A Drive is storage you mount as a directory, and the files are still there for the next sandbox that mounts it. It's generally available now.

This is from [Vercel's Drives announcement](https://vercel.com/blog/introducing-vercel-drives-persistent-storage-for-agents):

```ts
import { Sandbox, Drive } from '@vercel/sandbox';

const drive = await Drive.getOrCreate({ name: 'agent-workspace' });
const sandbox = await Sandbox.create({
  mounts: { '/workspace': drive },
});

await sandbox.runCommand('git', ['clone', repoUrl, '/workspace/repo']);
```

Everything under `/workspace` lives on the drive, everything else goes when the sandbox does. Other sandboxes can mount a read-only copy, so one agent builds a dataset and the rest just read it. You can also fork a drive to try two approaches in parallel, but forks don't merge back, so it's basically a branch you can never merge. Default size is 1 TiB, or 1 GiB on Hobby.

## The rest of what shipped

MCP Events in Vercel Connect are in public beta. Agents can subscribe to webhook events from compatible MCP servers, so they start when something changes in a connected tool instead of waiting for someone to type a prompt. Connect itself has been live since August with over 1,000 connections, and eve, Vercel's agent framework, now has memory, add-ons and dashboard setup.

AI Gateway got Budgets, which cap spend per key, project, person or team. An agent left running over a weekend is very good at running up a bill, so this one's overdue. There's also US-only inference, and Token Pass in early access for Pro teams: $30 a month for $80 of credit on GLM 5.3 and Kimi K3.

For bigger companies, Bring Your Own Cloud on AWS runs Vercel compute inside your own AWS account, and managed access for Connect lets IT approve what agents can reach through the normal company login. Daemons for background workers and a container runtime for any language shipped too. We'll write those up once we've used them.

## The day itself

The talks were good and so was the networking.

![A pyramid of white boxy monitors showing code and Ship logos on the hangar floor at Vercel Ship, with the Agent Lab stairs behind it](https://qxvqs298ldvynvwd.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/blog/vercel-ship-2026-san-francisco/monitor-pyramid.webp)

![A packed audience watching a three-person panel on the main stage at Vercel Ship, under a hangar roof with strip lights and a Ship SF light wall](https://qxvqs298ldvynvwd.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/blog/vercel-ship-2026-san-francisco/panel-stage.webp)

Some of the people we met, or watched from the audience:

![Selfie of Jono and Sne from Roboto Studio either side of Magnus Hillestad, who is wearing an orange Sanity jacket, in a busy room with a white beamed ceiling](https://qxvqs298ldvynvwd.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/blog/vercel-ship-2026-san-francisco/magnus-hillestad.webp)
*Magnus Hillestad, Sanity co-founder*

![Selfie of Jono, Sne holding a coffee cup, and Matt Palmer from Cursor in front of a black stage curtain](https://qxvqs298ldvynvwd.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/blog/vercel-ship-2026-san-francisco/matt-palmer.webp)
*Matt Palmer, Cursor*

![Selfie of Jono, Sne holding a glass of wine, and Eric Gandhi in a navy blazer, in front of a large colorful painting](https://qxvqs298ldvynvwd.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/blog/vercel-ship-2026-san-francisco/eric-gandhi.webp)
*Eric Gandhi, Supabase*

![Selfie of Jono and Sne with three people from the Datadog team, holding drinks at the Vercel partner event](https://qxvqs298ldvynvwd.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/blog/vercel-ship-2026-san-francisco/datadog-team.webp)
*The Datadog team, New York*

![Selfie of Jono, Sne in a Vercel Racing Club jacket, and Chris and Will from Inth under the Muir Woods National Monument sign](https://qxvqs298ldvynvwd.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/blog/vercel-ship-2026-san-francisco/inth-team.webp)
*Chris and Will, Inth*

![Black and white photo of a live interview with Evil Rabbit from Vercel on bar stools in front of a black wall with a white Vercel triangle, while a camera operator films](https://qxvqs298ldvynvwd.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/blog/vercel-ship-2026-san-francisco/evil-rabbit.webp)
*Evil Rabbit, Vercel*

![Selfie of Jono, Sne and Bersabel Tadesse from BB, who is wearing a cap and glasses, at a booth inside the venue](https://qxvqs298ldvynvwd.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/blog/vercel-ship-2026-san-francisco/bersabel-tadesse.webp)
*Bersabel Tadesse, BB*

The partner event, out on the bay, was easier for actually talking to people.

![A blue and white ferry docked at the Golden Gate Ferry Terminal with the Bay Bridge behind it, seen from the partner event venue](https://qxvqs298ldvynvwd.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/blog/vercel-ship-2026-san-francisco/partner-event-venue.webp)
*The partner event venue, San Francisco Bay*

We also grabbed a photo with Hal from Candid Leap outside the Ship SF containers.

![Selfie of Jono, Hal from Candid Leap, and Sne in a Vercel Racing Club jacket in front of two stacked black shipping containers printed with the Ship SF logo and the Vercel triangle](https://qxvqs298ldvynvwd.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/blog/vercel-ship-2026-san-francisco/jono-sne-hal-zeitlin.webp)
*Jono, Sne and Hal from Candid Leap*

And Vercel sold us the limited edition bomber jacket, designed by Monogram. No regrets.

![Jono and Sne, wearing the Vercel Racing Club bomber jacket, either side of a chrome mannequin in the matching racing suit at the Vercel store powered by Shopify](https://qxvqs298ldvynvwd.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/blog/vercel-ship-2026-san-francisco/vercel-racing-club-jacket.webp)
*Jono and Sne at the Vercel store, next to the Vercel Racing Club suit.*

The rest, including the case for a pink edition, is in [the full write-up](https://robotostudio.com/blog/vercel-ship-2026-san-francisco?utm_source=devto&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=vercel-ship-2026-recap&utm_content=devto-article).

---

I'm Jono. I run [Roboto Studio](https://robotostudio.com/?utm_source=devto&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=vercel-ship-2026-recap&utm_content=devto-article). Next.js and Sanity mostly, nearly all of it on Vercel. If you've already got an agent running on Drives or MCP Events, I'd like to hear what broke first.