Custom agents
Note
This functionality is in early access and still evolving. For now, we recommend testing it in a demo or staging environment, rather than deploying to production.
Join our Discord channel or contact us to get help or share feedback.
Custom agents beyond the ones listed in the Coder registry can be used with Coder.
Prerequisites
- A Coder deployment with v2.21 or later
- A Coder workspace / template
- A custom agent that supports Model Context Protocol (MCP)
Getting Started
Coder uses the MCP protocol to report activity back to the Coder control plane. From there, activity is displayed in the Coder dashboard.
First, your template will need a coder_app for the agent. This can be a web app or command run in the terminal and ideally gives the user a UI to interact with or view more details about the agent.
From there, the agent can run the MCP server with the coder exp mcp server command. You will need to set the CODER_MCP_APP_STATUS_SLUG environment variable to match the slug in the coder_app resource. CODER_AGENT_TOKEN must also be set, but will be present inside a Coder workspace.
Example
Inside a Coder workspace, run the following commands:
coder login # be sure to be authenticated with the Coder CLI
export CODER_MCP_APP_STATUS_SLUG=my-agent # needs to be the same as the slug in the coder_app resource
# Use your own agent's logic and syntax here:
any-custom-agent configure-mcp --name "coder" --command "coder exp mcp server"
This will start the MCP server and report activity back to the Coder control plane on behalf of the coder_app resource.
See the Goose module source code for a real world example.
Contributing
We welcome contributions for various agents via the Coder registry!
See our contributing guide for more information.