Quickstart
Install Coder, build your first template, and launch your first workspace in this quickstart guide.
On this page
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:
- Check mark Install the Coder control plane.
- Check mark Create a template (blueprint for dev environments).
- Check mark Launch a workspace (your actual dev environment).
- Check mark 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:
| Component | What It Is | Real-World Analogy |
|---|---|---|
| You | The engineer/developer/builder working | The head chef cooking the meal |
| Templates | A Terraform blueprint that defines your dev environment (OS, tools, resources) | Recipe for a meal |
| Workspaces | The actual running environment created from the template | The cooked meal |
| Users | A developer who launches the workspace from a template and does their work inside it | The people eating the meal |
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 4 GB+ RAM (ideally a separate machine or VM, not your primary dev machine)
- Familiarity with running commands in the terminal
- 10 minutes of your time
Tip
If you use a coding agent like Claude Code, the coder/skills setup skill can train the coding agent on the following steps (install a container runtime, install Coder, create your first template, and launch a workspace).
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.
-
Install Docker Engine:
curl -sSL https://get.docker.com | shFor more details, visit Docker's docs on installing Docker on Linux.
-
Assign your user to the Docker group:
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER -
Run
newgrpto activate the groups changes:newgrp dockerYou might need to log out of and back into your machine or restart your machine for changes to take effect.
-
Launch the Docker daemon:
sudo systemctl start docker
Colima is a free, lightweight container runtime that provides the Docker daemon on macOS without the overhead of Docker Desktop.
-
Install Colima and the Docker CLI with Homebrew:
brew install colima docker -
Start Colima to launch the Docker daemon:
colima start -
Point
DOCKER_HOSTat the Colima socket so Coder can reach the daemon:export DOCKER_HOST="unix://${HOME}/.colima/default/docker.sock"Colima exposes its Docker socket at
~/.colima/default/docker.sock, not/var/run/docker.sock, so Coder needsDOCKER_HOSTto find it. Set it in the same terminal where you'll runcoder serverin the next step. To persist it across new terminals and restarts, add theexportline to your shell's startup file, such as~/.zshrc,~/.bashrc, or~/.config/fish/config.fish.
If you plan to use the built-in PostgreSQL database, ensure that the Visual C++ Runtime is installed.
Podman Desktop is a free GUI for the Podman container runtime. Its onboarding installs and configures the required Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2) or Hyper-V layer if it isn't already enabled.
-
Download and install Podman Desktop.
-
Follow the onboarding to configure Podman.
-
If you configured Podman to use WSL2, upgrade WSL2 to version 2.5.1 or later, or create a
.wslconfigfile.WSL2 version 2.5.1 and later use cgroups v2 by default. Create the
.wslconfigfile in the%USERPROFILE%directory with the following contents:[wsl2] kernelCommandLine=cgroup_no_v1=allThis is not required for Podman with Hyper-V.
-
Open Podman Desktop and complete the onboarding to create and start a Podman machine.
Podman Desktop enables Docker socket compatibility by default, so tools that expect the Docker daemon work without additional configuration.
Install and start Coder
Install the coder CLI to get started:
-
Install Coder:
curl -fsSL https://coder.com/install.sh | sh- For standalone binaries, system packages, or other alternate installation methods, refer to the latest release on GitHub.
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Start Coder:
coder server
-
Install Coder:
curl -fsSL https://coder.com/install.sh | sh- For standalone binaries, system packages, or other alternate installation methods, refer to the latest release on GitHub.
-
Start Coder:
coder