Get started with Chainguard Workspaces

This guide walks you through signing up for Chainguard Workspaces, opening a session on one of your repositories, detaching from the session, and returning to it. It takes about 15 minutes.

Note: Chainguard Workspaces is in beta. Available to organizations that turn it on with chainctl develop init, which comes with a free monthly allowance, or that arrange access with their Chainguard account team.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have the following:

• A GitHub account that can install GitHub Apps on the personal account or organization that owns your repository. To install the app on an organization and link it, you need the owner role on that organization.
• A local clone of a repository on github.com that you can push to.
• Optional: Claude Code installed and logged in on your laptop.

Step 1: Install or update chainctl

Workspaces uses the chainctl develop command. If you don’t have chainctl yet, follow the chainctl installation guide.

This guide needs chainctl 0.2.380 or later. Earlier releases can’t sign you up as this guide describes or run Claude Code in a session. If you already have chainctl, update it to the latest release, because Workspaces changes often during the beta:

sudo chainctl update

If you installed chainctl with Homebrew, run brew upgrade chainctl instead. Refer to Updating chainctl for details.

Step 2: Install the Chainguard App

By default, sessions fetch and push your repository through the Chainguard App, a GitHub App that also backs Chainguard Checks and Guardener. The sign-up in the next step links your Chainguard organization to a GitHub account.

1. Go to the Chainguard App installation page.
2. Choose the personal account or organization that owns your repository.
3. Choose All repositories, or select the repositories you want to use with Workspaces.
4. Review the requested permissions and select Install.

Step 3: Sign up and turn on Checks and Workspaces

The chainctl develop init command signs you in, creates a free Chainguard Starter organization if you don’t have one, and turns on Chainguard Checks and Chainguard Workspaces with a free monthly allowance that resets on the first day of each month (UTC). Run it in an interactive terminal, because it opens your browser and asks questions as it goes:

chainctl develop init

To create an organization, sign in with an email address and password or with Google. Other sign-in methods, such as GitHub, can’t create one.

The command does the following:

1. Signs you in through your browser, and registers a new Chainguard identity if you don’t have one.
2. Picks the Chainguard organization to use:
   • If you don’t belong to one, it asks your name, company, job title, and whether you want updates from Chainguard, then creates one. With a work email address, the organization is named after your email domain. With a personal email address, you name it, and its registry paths use its ID instead of its name.
   • If you belong to exactly one organization on the Starter or Team plan, it uses that one.
   • Otherwise, it stops and asks you to name an organization with --parent.
3. Asks you to accept the terms that Checks and Workspaces are offered under, if your organization hasn’t accepted them yet: the Code Analysis Terms, the Secured Platform Terms, the Master Service and License Agreement (MSLA), and the Terms of Service and Data Privacy Agreement that cover linking the Chainguard App.
4. If your organization isn’t linked to a GitHub account yet, asks which one to link. Link the account that owns your repository: press Enter for your own GitHub user, or enter the name of a GitHub organization you own, such as acme, not a URL. It then opens your browser so you can authorize the link. If the Chainguard App isn’t installed on the account, it offers to open the page that installs it, then authorizes and links again.
5. Turns on Checks and Workspaces with the monthly allowance, and prints each product’s limits, which Availability and limits describes. If Chainguard already granted your organization an allowance, it keeps that one.
6. Offers to connect your GitHub account, if you haven’t yet and your organization allows it, so that the sessions you create act on GitHub as you. The connection uses Chainguard Develop, a GitHub App separate from the Chainguard App. If you agree, it opens your browser again. If you run the command in your repository’s directory, it also offers to install Chainguard Develop on the GitHub accounts your repository needs. You can decline and connect later with chainctl develop github login, as described in Let sessions act on GitHub as you.

A GitHub account can be linked to only one Chainguard organization at a time. When you authorize the link, GitHub might ask you to authorize single sign-on for your GitHub organizations. Linking your own GitHub user doesn’t need it, so you can select Continue. To link an organization that requires SAML single sign-on, authorize single sign-on for that organization.

You can answer some of the questions ahead of time with flags. For example, to link the acme GitHub organization instead of your own GitHub user:

chainctl develop init --github-org acme

For every flag, refer to the chainctl develop init reference.

If your company already has a Chainguard organization, chainctl develop init can’t create another one for your email domain, so ask an owner of that organization to add you, as described in Give teammates access. If the command stops with an error, refer to chainctl develop init fails.

If your organization already has Workspaces through your Chainguard account team, someone with the owner role must accept the terms before anyone can open sessions in it, as described in chainctl develop accept-terms.

Step 4: Open a session

Change to your repository’s directory, then run chainctl develop. Replace $REPO_DIR with the path to your local clone, and $ORGANIZATION with the name of your Chainguard organization:

cd $REPO_DIR
chainctl develop --parent $ORGANIZATION

If you belong to only one Chainguard organization, you can omit --parent.

The first time you run the command in a directory, chainctl creates a session, syncs your directory into it, and attaches your terminal to a shell in the session. The session gets a name made of the repository name and two generated words, such as app/quiet-harbor, and a short ID, such as 3f9a2c1e. If your repository has neither a .chainguard/develop.yaml file nor a .chainguard/ci.yaml file, the session opens on the default environment.

While you’re attached, chainctl keeps a status row at the bottom of your terminal. The row lists the session’s terminals and shows messages from chainctl. To open more terminals in the session, refer to Use several terminals in a session. The first time you attach to a session from your laptop, chainctl also prints a short guide to the status row and the session menu’s keys above the shell’s prompt.

Step 5: Work in the session

Your shell runs as root in /work, which holds your repository. Try a few commands to look around:

git status
cat /etc/chainguard/session.yaml

The git status output matches your laptop’s checkout at the moment you opened the session, including uncommitted changes. The /etc/chainguard/session.yaml file records the session’s ID, repository, and commit, and the environment it was built from.

From here, you can work as you would on your laptop. For example:

• Run claude to start Claude Code. It uses your laptop’s Claude Code login. Refer to Use Claude Code in a session.
• Run run-ci to run your repository’s checks against the working tree, if your .chainguard/ci.yaml defines checks.
• Commit and run git push. Your laptop’s git user.name and user.email are already set in the session, and the Chainguard App, or Chainguard Develop if you connected your GitHub account, adds the credential for the push.

Commits you make in a session aren’t signed, because the session gets your git user.name and user.email but not your signing key or settings. If a branch requires signed commits, GitHub rejects your push to it. To get your work onto that branch, refer to The branch requires signed commits.

Step 6: Detach and return to the session

To detach, press Ctrl+] to open the session menu, then press Enter or d to choose Detach — let it park. Your terminal returns to your laptop’s shell. The session keeps running for about 10 minutes, then parks to a snapshot and stops using compute.

To return, run chainctl develop again from the same directory:

chainctl develop --parent $ORGANIZATION

Because the directory has exactly one session, chainctl reattaches to it, resuming it first if it parked. Your files, running processes, and shell are as you left them.

Your directory syncs into the session only the first time you attach. Changes you make on your laptop after that don’t reach the session, and changes in the session don’t reach your laptop. To move work between them, push from one and pull on the other.

Step 7: Delete the session

A parked session expires 5 days after it parks, and until then it counts toward your session limit. With the free monthly allowance, you can have one session at a time, so delete it when you’re done. First, list your sessions to find its name:

chainctl develop list --parent $ORGANIZATION

Then delete the session by name. This example deletes app/quiet-harbor:

chainctl develop delete app/quiet-harbor --parent $ORGANIZATION

The delete command asks you to confirm, then destroys the session’s VM and its snapshot. Anything you didn’t push is gone.

Give teammates access

Each teammate opens and manages their own sessions, which count toward your organization’s limits. To open sessions, a teammate needs the owner or limited_owner role, or the sandbox.user role together with viewer. Refer to Roles.

Add a teammate

In a Starter organization, the steps differ, as described in Add a teammate to a Starter organization. If you have the owner role in your organization, invite your teammate and grant them the sandbox.user role as follows:

1. Create an invite for your teammate with the viewer role. Your teammate needs it as well as sandbox.user, because sandbox.user alone doesn’t let chainctl develop find your organization. Replace $EMAIL with your teammate’s email address:

   chainctl iam invite create $ORGANIZATION --role viewer --email $EMAIL

2. Send your teammate the invite code that the command prints. Your teammate accepts the invite by logging in with it, replacing $INVITE_CODE with the code:

   chainctl auth login --invite-code $INVITE_CODE

3. After your teammate accepts, list your organization’s role-bindings. The output shows each member’s identity ID next to their email address:

   chainctl iam role-bindings list --parent $ORGANIZATION

4. Grant your teammate the sandbox.user role, replacing $IDENTITY_ID with their identity ID:

   chainctl iam role-bindings create --identity $IDENTITY_ID --role sandbox.user --parent $ORGANIZATION

Your teammate can then install chainctl, as described in Step 1, and open a session, as described in Step 4. For more about roles, refer to Overview of roles and role-bindings.

Add a teammate to a Starter organization

If you created your organization with chainctl develop init, it’s a Starter organization, and you have the limited_owner role rather than owner. You can’t create role-bindings for other users, so you can’t grant the sandbox.user role. An invite can give only a role whose permissions you also have, and of those roles, only limited_owner can open sessions.

To let your teammate open sessions, run step 1 of Add a teammate with --role limited_owner instead of --role viewer, replacing $EMAIL with your teammate’s email address:

chainctl iam invite create $ORGANIZATION --role limited_owner --email $EMAIL

The limited_owner role also lets its holder manage your organization’s billing and invite or remove members. Your teammate accepts the invite as described in step 2 of Add a teammate.

Invites in a Starter organization have the following limits:

• Each invite must name your teammate’s email address with --email, and the address must be in your organization’s domain or one of its subdomains.
• If you signed up with a personal email address, you can’t invite anyone.

A coworker whose email address is in your organization’s domain can also ask to join by running chainctl starter request-access, which emails you the request.

Next steps

• Manage sessions covers using several terminals or sessions, keeping a session running while you’re away, and the session menu.
• Configure a session’s environment explains how to choose the packages and network access a session gets.
• Manage session credentials explains what a session can reach and how to change it.
• Ask questions in the #workspaces-questions channel in the Chainguard community Slack.