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Connect a compute provider

Where the machines a workspace runs on are connected — Cloud, Docker, Kubernetes or SSH — and what the Providers pane under Account is for.

Admin Reviewed

What you'll have

Knowing where a compute provider is connected, and what one gives the shells and worktrees your channels open.

Every channel that opens a shell, mounts a repo or hands an agent a worktree needs a machine to run it on. Those machines are compute providers, and they are connected once, for the whole workspace, by an admin.

Planned The Providers pane carries no rows and no Connect control yet: it opens on a blurred picture of the pane, the sentence Connect a compute provider, then choose where each run lands. and a disabled Coming soon control. The steps below are the procedure that pane is designed for, and none of them can be carried out today.

  1. Select Settings at the bottom of the channel list.

    Result Settings opens on your profile. The left column carries two groups: the upper one, which is personal to whoever is signed in, and “Account”, below it, which is the workspace.

  2. Under Account, open Providers.

    Result The pane lists the kinds of compute provider a workspace can use — Cloud, Docker, Kubernetes and SSH — one row each. A connected row reads “Connected” and names what it points at, such as `docker · localhost` or an SSH login. An unconnected row reads “Not connected”, with a second line saying what is missing: “No vendor configured”, “Not configured”.

  3. Select Connect on the kind of machine you want the workspace to use, and give it the details it asks for.

    Result Each kind asks for what identifies it: a vendor for Cloud, a host for Docker or SSH, a cluster for Kubernetes.

  4. Read the row back.

    Result The row's status changes to “Connected” and names what it points at, such as `docker · localhost` or an SSH login. The row is now selectable wherever a Workspace channel is created.

  5. If this doesn't work

    If Account does not appear in Settings, or Providers is missing from it, your sign-in does not hold the permission that opens it: a pane you may not open is absent rather than shown and disabled, so ask whoever created the workspace to grant it. If a row stays at Not connected after you save it, the details it was given did not reach the machine — re-open the row and check the host or vendor line it shows. If a provider connects and then drops later, Inbox names the machine that dropped off and says whether it is retrying. Open Inbox at the bottom of the channel list to see which of the two it is. If a step still does not match what you see, Troubleshooting is written for that moment.

The workspace then has somewhere to run, and the Providers pane is the whole record of it: every row that reads Connected names the machine it reached and the account it reached it as, and every row that does not is a kind nobody has set up yet. Nothing else in the workspace needs to know which one you chose.