Quickstart

Follow this guide to get your first Coder development environment running in under 10 minutes. This guide covers the essential concepts and shows you how to create your first workspace and open it in your preferred editor. This workspace includes a basic set of tools to edit most code bases.

What you'll do

In this quickstart, you'll:

• ✅ Install Coder server.
• ✅ Create a template (blueprint for dev environments).
• ✅ Launch a workspace (your actual dev environment).
• ✅ Connect from your favorite IDE.

A 30-second metaphor for Coder

Before diving in, the following table breaks down the core concepts that power Coder, explained through a cooking analogy:

Putting it Together: Coder separates who defines environments from who uses them. Admins create and manage Templates, the recipes, while developers use those Templates to launch Workspaces, the meals.

Prerequisites

• A machine with 2+ CPU cores and 4GB+ RAM
• Familiarity with running commands in the terminal
• 10 minutes of your time

Step 1: Install a container runtime

Coder needs a Docker-compatible container runtime running on the host, such as Colima, Rancher Desktop, Podman, or Docker Desktop. If you already have one installed and running, skip ahead to Step 2. Otherwise, follow the steps below to install a free runtime quickly on your platform.

Step 2: Install and start Coder

Install the coder CLI to get started:

Coder will attempt to open the setup page in your browser. If it doesn't open automatically, go to http://localhost:3000.

• If you get a browser warning similar to Secure Site Not Available, you can ignore the warning and continue to the setup page.

If your Coder server is on a network or cloud device, or you are having trouble viewing the page, locate the web UI URL in Coder logs in your terminal. It looks like https://<CUSTOM-STRING>.<TUNNEL>.try.coder.app. It's one of the first lines of output, so you might have to scroll up to find it.

Step 3: Initial setup

1. Create your admin account:

   • Email: [email protected]
   • Password: Choose a strong password.

   You can also choose to Continue with GitHub instead of creating an admin account. Coder automatically grants admin permissions to the first user that signs in.

   

Step 4: Create your first template and workspace

Templates define what's in your development environment. The following is a basic example:

1. Select Templates → New Template.

2. Select the Coder Quickstart template from the list of starter templates.

   Note: running this template requires Docker to be running in the background, so make sure Docker is running!

3. Name your template:

   • Name: quickstart
   • Display name: quickstart doc template
   • Description: Provision Docker containers as Coder workspaces

4. Select Save.

   

What just happened? You defined a template — a reusable blueprint for dev environments — in your Coder deployment. It's now stored in your organization's template list, where you and any teammates in the same org can create workspaces from it. Now it's time launch a workspace.

Step 5: Launch your workspace

1. After the template is ready, select + Create Workspace.

2. Give the workspace a name. If you need a suggestion for a workspace, you can select the automatically generated name next to the Need a suggestion? label.

3. In this window are parameters that customize the workspace's behavior. Set the following based on your needs:

   • Programming Languages: the languages to pre-install in your workspace. You can use more than one if you want.
   • IDEs & Editors: the IDEs and editors you want to configure for quick access once the workspace is running. You can choose more than one if you want.
   • Git Repository (Optional): the Git repository you want to clone into your workspace. Leave this field blank to skip it.

   Note: If you use any of the JetBrains IDEs as your preferred IDE (such as PyCharm, GoLand, or RustRover), select JetBrains IDEs as the value. A new parameter will appear, with which you can choose your preferred JetBrains IDE.

4. Launch your workspace by selecting Create workspace.

After a short wait (10-15 seconds on most modern computers), Coder will start your new workspace:

Workspace is running

Step 6: Connect your IDE

Each of the buttons in the workspace view is a different agent app (more on this in a later section). Select your preferred IDE from the list of agent apps. This guide assumes you'll use Visual Studio Code, but the process is similar for other IDEs and editors.

After VS Code loads the remote environment, you can select Open Folder to explore directories in the Docker container or work on something new.

If you didn't clone an existing Git repository when you created your workspace, you can clone it manually if you want:

1. Select Clone Repository and enter the repository URL.

   For example, to clone the Coder repo, enter https://github.com/coder/coder.git.

   Learn more about how to find the repository URL in the GitHub documentation.

2. Choose the folder to which VS Code should clone the repo. It will be in its own directory within this folder.

   Note that you cannot create a new parent directory in this step.

3. After VS Code completes the clone, select Open to open the directory.

4. You are now using VS Code in your Coder environment!

Success! You're coding in Coder

You now have:

• A Coder server running locally.
• A template defining your environment.
• A workspace running that environment.
• IDE access to code remotely.

What's next?

Now that you have your own workspace running, you can start exploring more advanced capabilities that Coder offers.

• Try Coder Agents, the chat interface and API for delegating development work to coding agents in your Coder deployment.

• Read about managing Workspaces for your team

• Read about implementing monitoring tools for your Coder Deployment

Troubleshooting

Cannot connect to the Docker daemon

When creating a workspace from a Docker template, you may see an error like:

This means a container runtime is either not installed or not running on the machine where Coder is running. A runtime must be running before you create a workspace from a Docker-based template.

Can't start Coder server: Address already in use

Another process is already listening on port 3000. Identify and stop it, then start the server again.

Linux

1. Stop the process:

   sudo systemctl stop coder

2. Start Coder:

   coder server

macOS

1. Identify the process using port 3000:

   lsof -i :3000

2. Stop the process using the PID from the previous command:

   kill <PID>

   If the process does not exit, force-kill it:

   kill -9 <PID>

3. Start Coder:

   coder server

Windows

1. Identify the process using port 3000 in PowerShell:

   Get-NetTCPConnection -LocalPort 3000 | Select-Object OwningProcess

2. Stop the process using the PID from the previous command:

   Stop-Process -Id <PID>

3. Start Coder:

   coder server