Coder Tasks
Coder Tasks is an interface for running & managing coding agents such as Claude Code and Aider, powered by Coder workspaces.
Coder Tasks is best for cases where the IDE is secondary, such as prototyping or running long-running background jobs. However, tasks run inside full workspaces so developers can connect via an IDE to take a task to completion.
Note
Coder Tasks is free and open source. If you are a Coder Premium customer or want to run hundreds of tasks in the background, contact us for roadmap information and volume pricing.
Supported Agents (and Models)
Any terminal-based agent that supports Model Context Protocol (MCP) can be integrated with Coder Tasks, including your own custom agents.
Out of the box, agents like Claude Code and Goose are supported with built-in modules that can be added to a template. See all modules compatible with Tasks in the Registry.
Enterprise LLM Providers such as AWS Bedrock, GCP Vertex and proxies such as LiteLLM can be used as well in order to keep intellectual property private. Self-hosted models such as llama4 can also be configured with specific agents, such as Aider and Goose.
Architecture
Each task runs inside its own Coder workspace for isolation purposes. Agents like Claude Code also run in the workspace, and can be pre-installed via a module in the Coder Template. Agents then communicate with your LLM provider, so no GPUs are directly required in your workspaces for inference.
Coder's built-in modules for agents will pre-install the agent alongside AgentAPI. AgentAPI is an open source project developed by Coder which improves status reporting and the Chat UI, regardless of which agent you use.
Getting Started with Tasks
Option 1) Import and Modify Our Example Template
Our example template is the best way to experiment with Tasks with a real world demo app. The application is running in the background and you can experiment with coding agents.
Try prompts such as:
- "rewrite the backend in go"
- "document the project structure"
- "change the primary color theme to purple"
To import the template and begin configuring it, follow the documentation in the Coder Registry
Note
The Tasks tab will appear automatically after you add a Tasks-compatible template and refresh the page.
Option 2) Create or Duplicate Your Own Template
A template becomes a Task template if it defines a coder_ai_task resource and a coder_parameter named "AI Prompt". Coder analyzes template files during template version import to determine if these requirements are met. Try adding this terraform block to an existing template where you'll add our Claude Code module. Note: the coder_ai_task resource is defined within the Claude Code Module, so it's not defined within this block.
data "coder_parameter" "ai_prompt" {
name = "AI Prompt"
type = "string"
}
data "coder_parameter" "setup_script" {
name = "setup_script"
display_name = "Setup Script"
type = "string"
form_type = "textarea"
description = "Script to run before running the agent"
mutable = false
default = ""
}
# The Claude Code module does the automatic task reporting
# Other agent modules: https://registry.coder.com/modules?search=agent
# Or use a custom agent:
module "claude-code" {
count = data.coder_workspace.me.start_count
source = "registry.coder.com/coder/claude-code/coder"
version = "2.2.0"
agent_id = coder_agent.main.id
folder = "/home/coder/projects"
install_claude_code = true
claude_code_version = "latest"
order = 999
# experiment_post_install_script = data.coder_parameter.setup_script.value
# This enables Coder Tasks
experiment_report_tasks = true
}
variable "anthropic_api_key" {
type = string
description = "Generate one at: https://console.anthropic.com/settings/keys"
sensitive = true
}
resource "coder_env" "anthropic_api_key" {
agent_id = coder_agent.main.id
name = "CODER_MCP_CLAUDE_API_KEY"
value = var.anthropic_api_key
}
Note
This definition is not final and may change while Tasks is in beta. After any changes, we guarantee backwards compatibility for one minor Coder version. After that, you may need to update your template to continue using it with Tasks.
Because Tasks run unpredictable AI agents, often for background tasks, we recommend creating a separate template for Coder Tasks with limited permissions. You can always duplicate your existing template, then apply separate network policies/firewalls/permissions to the template. From there, follow the docs for one of our built-in modules for agents in order to add it to your template, configure your LLM provider.
Alternatively, follow our guide for custom agents.
Customizing the Task UI
The Task UI displays all workspace apps declared in a Task template. You can customize the app shown in the sidebar using the sidebar_app.id field on the coder_ai_task resource.
If a workspace app has the special "preview" slug, a navbar will appear above it. This is intended for templates that let users preview a web app they’re working on.
We plan to introduce more customization options in future releases.
Automatically name your tasks
Coder can automatically generate a name your tasks if you set the ANTHROPIC_API_KEY environment variable on the Coder server. Otherwise, tasks will be given randomly generated names.
Opting out of Tasks
If you tried Tasks and decided you don't want to use it, you can hide the Tasks tab by starting coder server with the CODER_HIDE_AI_TASKS=true environment variable or the --hide-ai-tasks flag.