These guides contain information on managing the Coder control plane andauthoring templates.

First time viewers looking to set up control plane access can start with theconfiguration guide. If you're a team lead looking to designenvironments for your developers, check out ourtemplates guides. If you are a developer using Coder, werecommend theuser guides.

For automation and scripting workflows, see ourCLIandAPI docs.

For any information not strictly contained in these sections, check out ourTutorials andFAQs.

What is an image, template, dev container, or workspace

Image

• Abase image containsOS-level packages and utilities that the Coder workspace is built on. It canbe anexample image, custom image in yourregistry, or one fromDocker Hub. It isdefined in each template.
• Managed by: Externally to Coder.

Template

• Templates include infrastructure-level dependenciesfor the workspace. For example, a template can include KubernetesPersistentVolumeClaims, Docker containers, or EC2 VMs.
• Managed by: Template administrators from within the Coder deployment.

Startup scripts

• Agent startup scripts apply to all users of a template. This is anintentionally flexible area that template authors have at their disposal tomanage the "last mile" of workspace creation.
• Managed by: Coder template administrators.

Workspace

• Aworkspace is the environment thata developer works in. Developers on a team each work from their own workspaceand can usemultiple IDEs.
• Managed by: Developers

Development containers (dev containers)

• ADevelopment Containeris an open-source specification for defining development environments (calleddev containers). It is generally stored in VCS alongside associated sourcecode. It can reference an existing base image, or a custom Dockerfile thatwill be built on-demand.
• Managed by: Dev Teams

Dotfiles / personalization

• Users may have their own specific preferences relating to shell prompt, customkeybindings, color schemes, and more. Users can leverage Coder'sdotfiles support or create their ownscript to personalize their workspace. Be aware that users with rootpermissions in their workspace can override almost all of the previousconfiguration.
• Managed by: Individual Users