Candidates treat computer-use agents like API agents with a screenshot. The interviewer is probing the new visual attack surface (hidden text, off-viewport UI, injected images) and how containment changes when the agent drives a real customer desktop. Most miss the per-turn-approval trap.
Updated Aug 2026 · Grounded in real Forward Deployed Engineer interview loops and written to a senior-engineer editorial bar.
Candidates treat computer-use agents like API agents with a screenshot. The interviewer is probing the new visual attack surface (hidden text, off-viewport UI, injected images) and how containment changes when the agent drives a real customer desktop. Most miss the per-turn-approval trap.
The senior signal is recognizing that a pixel-driven agent moves the trust boundary to the screen itself, so tool-schema defenses don't cover it. Strong candidates contain environmentally (sandboxed VM in the customer's network, egress allowlist, least-privilege app credentials, full screen-action audit log) and treat per-turn human approval as one layer inside a sandbox, never the sandbox, because approval fatigue means people rubber-stamp prompts. Watch for candidates who guard only the prompt, hand the agent broad desktop credentials, or design no fallback for UI drift.
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