# Coder Coder is a **self-hosted platform for [[Cloud Development Environments (CDEs)|cloud development environments]]**, now repositioned as infrastructure for running [[AI Agents|AI coding agents]] at enterprise scale. Workspaces are defined as Terraform templates and run on your own servers or cloud, so both developers and agents get standardized, disposable, governed environments, with the code never leaving your infrastructure. The 2026 pitch has three parts: - **Coder Workspaces**: templated, self-hosted dev environments where developers and agents work side by side - **Coder Agents**: run AI coding agents (any model) inside those governed workspaces - **Coder AI Governance**: centralized model access, policy controls, audit logging, and observability of agent activity ## Why it matters Agents multiply the environment problem. One developer needs one workspace; a fleet of agents needs dozens, each sandboxed, each auditable, each disposable. Coder's bet is that the same template-driven machinery that solved "works on my machine" for humans is what enterprises will use to give agents compute without giving them the keys. The self-hosted angle is the differentiator against [[GitHub Codespaces]]: compliance-heavy organizations (their customer list includes Square, Dropbox, Palantir, Mercedes, and the US Department of Defense) keep source code and agent traffic inside their own network. ## Reported outcomes - Dropbox: 4x faster developer onboarding - J.B. Hunt: 90% lower VDI costs Vendor-published numbers; directional at best. ## Model Open-source core (`coder/coder` on GitHub, AGPL-3.0) with a paid Premium tier for enterprise features. You bring the infrastructure; Terraform templates define what a workspace is. ## References - [Coder Website](https://coder.com) - [Coder on GitHub](https://github.com/coder/coder) - [Coder Documentation](https://coder.com/docs) ## Related - [[GitHub Codespaces]]: the managed alternative - [[AI Agents]]: the new tenant of these environments - [[Claude Code]]: one of the agents you would run in a governed workspace - [[Docker Sandboxes]]: local-scale sibling of the same isolation idea - [[Cloud Development Environments (CDEs)]]: the category - [[Devcontainers]]: the workspace definition format