Experiments
The Experiments tab under Agents > Settings > Manage Agents is where administrators opt in to features that are still iterating. The behavior, configuration surface, and APIs documented here may change between releases without notice.
Note
Everything in this page is experimental. Pin a release before broad rollout and review the release notes before upgrading.
Virtual desktop
Lets agents drive a graphical desktop inside the workspace through
spawn_agent with type=computer_use (screenshots, mouse, keyboard).
To enable, toggle Virtual Desktop on, then choose a Computer use provider (Anthropic or OpenAI). It also requires:
- The portabledesktop module installed in the workspace template.
- An API key for the selected provider configured under the Providers tab.
The Anthropic and OpenAI computer-use models are fixed by Coder per provider and are not selectable from this UI. Anthropic is the default when no provider is set.
Advisor
Lets a root agent pause its current turn and request strategic guidance from a separate, single-step model call. The advisor sees recent conversation context, runs without any tools, and returns concise advice for the parent agent rather than the end user. While active, it is the only tool the parent can call for that turn.
Useful for planning ambiguity, architectural tradeoffs, debugging strategy after repeated failures, or risk reduction before a destructive operation.
| Field | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Advisor (toggle) | Off | Master switch. When off, the advisor tool is not attached to new chats. |
| Max uses per run | 0 (unlimited) | Caps how many times an agent can call the advisor in a single chat run. Must be a non-negative integer. |
| Max output tokens | 0 (server default) | Caps the advisor model's response length. 0 uses the server default of 16,384 tokens. Must be a non-negative integer. |
| Reasoning effort | Use chat model | One of unset, low, medium, or high. Unset delegates to the underlying model's default. |
| Advisor model | Use chat model | Optional dedicated chat model config for the advisor. When unset, the advisor reuses the parent chat's model. |
The advisor is not available in plan mode or to subagents. Failed advisor invocations refund the per-run budget, and advisor calls are not metered against the parent chat's usage limit.
The same configuration is available at:
GET /api/experimental/chats/config/advisorPUT /api/experimental/chats/config/advisor
Chat debug logging
Records a detailed trace of each chat turn for troubleshooting: the normalized request sent to the LLM provider, the full response, token usage, retry attempts, and errors.
Off by default. Three layers control whether it runs for a given chat:
- Deployment override. Setting
CODER_CHAT_DEBUG_LOGGING_ENABLED=true(or--chat-debug-logging-enabledat server start) forces debug logging on for every chat. The runtime admin and user toggles become read-only. - Runtime admin gate. With the deployment override unset, the
Let users record chat debug logs toggle decides whether users can opt
in. Configure it at
GET/PUT /api/experimental/chats/config/debug-logging. - Per-user toggle. Users with the admin gate enabled can turn debug
logging on for their own chats from Agents > Settings > General
under Record debug logs for my chats. The endpoint
PUT /api/experimental/chats/config/user-debug-loggingreturns409 Conflictif the deployment override is active and403 Forbiddenif the admin has not enabled user opt-in.
Important
Debug logs may contain sensitive content from prompts, responses, tool calls, and errors. Treat them with the same care as conversation history. Only the chat owner (or a user with read access to the chat) can fetch a chat's debug runs through the API. Administrators do not get blanket access to all users' debug data.
When debug logging is active for a chat, a Debug tab appears in the right panel of the Agents page (alongside Git, Terminal, and Desktop) for that chat's owner. The tab lists recent debug runs and lets you expand a run into its per-step request, response, token usage, retry attempts, errors, and policy metadata.
The same data is available through the experimental API:
GET /api/experimental/chats/{chat}/runslists the most recent runs for a chat (up to 100, newest first).GET /api/experimental/chats/{chat}/runs/{debugRun}returns a single run with all of its steps, including normalized request and response bodies.
Debug runs are stored alongside the chat and are removed when the parent conversation is deleted (manually, by retention, or by chat purge). See Data Retention for the conversation retention controls.