🚀 Coder Playground

Welcome to the Coder Playground! This is your instant sandbox environment to explore Coder - the open-source platform for creating self-hosted cloud development environments (CDEs).

What is Coder?

Coder enables you to provision secure, standardized development environments in your infrastructure. Whether you're using Docker, Kubernetes, VMs, or cloud providers, Coder gives your team:

• Instant dev environments that spin up in seconds
• Consistency across your entire team
• Security with centralized access controls
• Flexibility to work from any device with just a browser

What's Pre-Configured in This Playground?

This playground uses a custom OCI image with:

• Coder Server - Pre-installed and configured
• Docker - Pre-installed for workspace management
• Systemd Services - Automatic service startup
• Web IDE Access - Connect via VS Code in your browser

How to Get Started

1️⃣ Access the Coder Dashboard

Navigate to the Coder UI button on the top left and use the following credentials:

• Username: admin@example.com
• Password: YourSecurePassword123!

2️⃣ Create your first workspace

1. Create the Template

• Go to Templates in the Coder dashboard
• Click New Template on the top right
• Select the Docker template by clicking on the "Use Template" button
• Give your template a name, description, and icon
• Click Save

2. Create a Workspace from the Template

• After the template builds successfully, go to Workspaces
• Select your newly created Docker template
• Fill in any required parameters (workspace name, etc.)
• Click Create Workspace

3️⃣ Connect to Your IDE

Navigate to the workspace and Click the code-server button to launch a full-featured IDE in your browser. No local installation needed!

Things to Try

Once you're in your workspace, experiment with:

• Terminal Access - Open a terminal and explore the containerized environment
• File Editing - Create and edit files using the web-based VS Code interface
• Port Forwarding - Run a web server and access it via Coder's automatic port forwarding
• Extensions - Install VS Code extensions to customize your environment
• Git Operations - Clone repositories and commit changes

CLI commands to try out

1. Login to Coder UI via the credentials listed in Step 1.
2. Navigate to your avatar on the top right and click on it. Then, Click on Account -> Tokens.
3. Click on "Add Token" and name the token.
4. Copy the resulting value and switch back to the CLI.
5. Run export CODER_SESSION_TOKEN=<copied-value-from-above> && export CODER_URL="http://127.0.0.1:3000"
6. Run coder templates list to list the available templates.
7. Create a workspace via the CLI using coder create <workspace-name> -t <template-name-from-above>
8. Wait for the workspace creation to end.
9. Run coder ssh <workspace-name> to drop a shell inside the workspace container.
10. Run coder ping <workspace-name> to measure latency to the workspace.
11. Run coder show <workspace-name> to display workspace resources and agent status.

Architecture Overview

┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Custom OCI Image (ghcr.io)         │
│  - Ubuntu 24.04 base                │
│  - Coder pre-installed              │
│  - Docker pre-installed             │
└────────────────┬────────────────────┘
                 │
                 ▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│     Coder Server (systemd)          │
│  - Authentication & Management      │
│  - Workspace Provisioning           │
│  - IDE Proxy                        │
└────────────────┬────────────────────┘
                 │
                 ▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│    Docker Workspace (Running)       │
│  - Your development environment     │
│  - Pre-configured with tools        │
│  - Accessible via web browser       │
└─────────────────────────────────────┘

What's Next?

This playground gives you a taste of Coder's capabilities. In a production environment, you can:

• Create Templates - Define infrastructure-as-code templates for your team
• Integrate with Git - Automatically provision workspaces from repository branches
• Scale Up - Deploy on Kubernetes for multi-tenant, scalable environments
• Customize - Configure authentication, resource limits, and security policies

Learn More

• 📚 Documentation
• 💬 Community Discord
• 🐙 GitHub Repository
• 🎓 Tutorials

Need Help?

• Documentation: Check out the Coder docs for detailed guides
• Community Support: Join our Discord server to ask questions
• Report Issues: Found a bug? Open an issue on GitHub

Note: This playground uses a custom OCI image for faster startup and better reproducibility. For production use, see the installation guide.

Happy coding! 🎉