Coder powers secure, scalable development across key industries — automotive, finance, government, and technology — enabling faster builds, tighter compliance, and seamless AI adoption in enterprise-grade cloud environments.
Dev containers allow developers to define their development environment as code using the Dev Container specification.
Configuration lives in a devcontainer.json file alongside source code, enabling consistent, reproducible environments.
By adopting dev containers, organizations can:
Standardize environments:
Eliminate "works on my machine" issues while still allowing developers to customize their tools within approved boundaries.
Scale efficiently:
Let developers maintain their own environment definitions, reducing the burden on platform teams.
Improve security:
Use hardened base images and controlled package registries to enforce security policies while enabling developer self-service.
Coder supports two approaches for running dev containers.
Choose based on your infrastructure and workflow requirements.
Dev Containers Integration
The Dev Containers Integration uses the standard @devcontainers/cli and Docker to run containers inside your workspace.
This is the recommended approach for most use cases.
Best for:
Workspaces with Docker available (Docker-in-Docker or mounted socket)
Dev container management in the Coder dashboard (discovery, status, rebuild)
Envbuilder transforms the workspace image itself from a devcontainer.json, rather than running containers inside the workspace.
It does not require a Docker daemon.
Best for:
Environments where Docker is unavailable or restricted
Infrastructure-level control over image builds, caching, and security scanning
Kubernetes-native deployments without privileged containers
