exe.devNightly

exe.dev is a cloud service that runs each workroom on a VM of its own. This page covers the one-time setup, which Workroom walks you through, and creating a workroom on exe.dev. For what remote workrooms are, see Remote workrooms.

Before you start

• Your project's origin must be on github.com, and its base branch must be on origin. See Remote workrooms.
• You need an exe.dev account, a paid plan, and a GitHub account connected to exe.dev. After signing up, payment is required, as the setup sheet says.

You do not need to prepare any of it first. Workroom checks each one and asks only for what is missing.

Set up exe.dev

The first time you create a workroom on exe.dev, Workroom checks that your account is ready. If it is, the create carries on. If it is not, the Set up exe.dev sheet opens over the new workroom's pane, and the pane's Check exe.dev account step shows Waiting for you.

The sheet has three steps. Workroom checks each one itself and ticks it off when it is done.

1. Account. exe.dev signs you in with an SSH key.
   • If your Mac has no SSH key, click Create SSH Key. Workroom makes one at ~/.ssh/id_ed25519, the key ssh uses by default. It has no passphrase, so anyone who can use your Mac account can use it, and ssh offers it to every server.
   • If your key has a passphrase, add it to your ssh agent with ssh-add, then click Try Again.
   • Enter your email and click Send Link. Use the email of the account you already have, or a new one to create an account. exe.dev sends you a link. Click it, and Workroom carries on by itself. Use a Different Email changes the address.
   • To sign up by hand instead, click Sign Up in a Terminal Instead. A terminal inside the sheet runs exe.dev's own sign-up. Enter your email when it asks, then click the link it sends. Use the Email Form goes back.
2. Plan. exe.dev runs VMs on a paid plan. Click Choose a Plan, and pick one on exe.dev in your browser. Workroom carries on as soon as the plan is active.
3. GitHub. Click Connect GitHub, connect your GitHub account on exe.dev, and give its GitHub App access to your repositories. This lets your VMs clone and push as you, with no GitHub token on them.

For the Plan and GitHub steps, Open exe.dev Again reopens the page, and Check Again reads your account again, for a step you finished elsewhere.

When every step has a tick, click Create Workroom. The create that the sheet interrupted carries on, in the same pane. Cancel ends it and removes the pane. Closing the sheet cancels the setup.

If the Plan or GitHub check cannot get an answer, the step says so, and Create Workroom is available anyway. In that case exe.dev decides: if something is really missing, the create fails and says what. The Account step has to be done first.

Create a workroom on exe.dev

1. Click the + on a project, or right-click the project and choose New Workroom.
2. Under Remote, choose exe.dev.
3. Watch the checklist in the pane. When it finishes, click Done, or turn on Close automatically when done and the terminal opens by itself.

On your project's first exe.dev workroom, Workroom adds an exe.dev GitHub integration for the repository, so the VM can clone and push. It stays for the project's next workrooms. If exe.dev won't add one, the create carries on, and a private repository then fails at the clone.

The workroom's terminals run on the VM. A coding agent you start there keeps running when you close Workroom. See Reconnecting for what happens when your Mac sleeps or changes network.

If the clone fails with a message that GitHub refused it, check that GitHub is still connected at https://exe.dev/integrations#github, and that ssh exe.dev integrations list shows the repository attached to auto:all.

Ports

An exe.dev VM has no Ports list in the inspector. To reach a server running on it from a browser, share the port with exe.dev. See Port forwarding.

Delete the workroom

Deleting the workroom destroys its VM and everything on it. See Delete a remote workroom.