Get started

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.

This section includes some of the quicker ways to install Coder. For more detailed options, visit the Install page.

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 template builder guides you through creating one without writing any Terraform.

1. Select Templates > New Template. The template builder opens.

2. Select the Docker base template from the list.

   Note

   This template requires Docker to be running in the background, so make sure Docker is running.

3. Skip or configure any base template parameters, then select modules to add IDEs and tools to your template. For example, add code-server to get VS Code in the browser. You can skip module selection for now and add modules later.

4. On the final step, name your template:

   • Name: my-docker-template
   • Display name and Description: fill in as you like.

5. Select Create Template. Coder composes and validates the Terraform configuration, then creates your template.

   

What just happened? The template builder selected a base infrastructure template, composed it with any modules you chose, and generated a valid Terraform configuration. Coder validated the configuration server-side, then created a reusable template in your organization's template list. You and any teammates in the same organization can now create workspaces from it.

What happens under the hood?

A Coder template is a Terraform configuration, and Coder is built on top of Terraform. When you create a workspace from this template, a Coder provisioner runs a Terraform job from the template's configuration to build your environment. For the Docker base template, that job starts a Docker container with the Coder agent pre-configured, along with any modules you selected.

To learn how Coder uses Terraform to provision and run workspaces, refer to the architecture overview.

Now it's time to 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, you can select the automatically generated name next to the Need a suggestion? label.

3. If the template has any parameters, fill them in. Parameters vary by template and the modules you selected in the builder.

4. Select 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 button in the workspace view is a different agent app. The buttons in the UI reflect the modules you added in the template builder (such as code-server, Claude Code, or any of the JetBrains editors). Select your preferred IDE from the list of agent apps.

This guide uses VS Code Desktop, which opens the workspace in the VS Code installed on your local machine, using the Coder extension. To stay in the browser instead, select the browser-based VS Code option. The remaining steps are 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!

What's next?

You now have:

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

Now that you have your own workspace running, you can customize your template to fit your needs.

Learn more

• 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 usually 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.

If the runtime is running but Coder still cannot connect, the daemon may expose its socket at a path other than /var/run/docker.sock. This is common with Colima on macOS and with rootless Docker on Linux. In that case, point Coder at the socket with the DOCKER_HOST environment variable, then restart the Coder server.

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.