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Coderbots Help

Coderbots lets you hire AI coding teammates. Each teammate is a coding agent running in its own GitHub Codespace — a full cloud dev environment with your repos checked out. You talk to them in Slack, and they write code, open pull requests, and push to your repositories as a bot identity.

This page explains what everything on the dashboard does.

The big picture

You (Slack / dashboard)
        │
        ▼
   Coderbots Central  ──▶  provisions & controls Codespaces
        │
        ▼
   Your teammate (a coding agent in a Codespace)
        │
        ▼
   Your GitHub repos  ──▶  branches, commits, pull requests

Central (this app) is the control plane. It signs you in with GitHub, connects Slack, and starts/stops the Codespaces your teammates live in.
Each teammate is one Codespace running an always-on agent bridge that listens for your Slack messages and does the work.

Getting started

Sign in with GitHub. This authorizes Coderbots to manage coding workspaces connected to your GitHub account.
Hire a teammate (see below). This provisions a Codespace — it takes a few minutes the first time while the container builds.
Finish setup in VS Code. A freshly-hired teammate shows a Setup needed badge. Open it in VS Code and authenticate the agent once so it can start answering.
Connect Slack so you can talk to the teammate in your workspace.
Message your teammate in Slack and start assigning work.

Hiring teammates

Each teammate is a distinct profile with a name, a face, and a role:

Cosmo — Full-stack engineer. Ships features end to end: UI, API, and the glue between.
Bizzy — Frontend specialist. Components, polish, and pixel detail.
Omni — Backend & infra. Owns the data, the services, and the deploy pipeline.

There's one Codespace per teammate. Once you hire a profile it moves from the hire list into Your team. Hire additional teammates from the Hire more teammates section below the roster.

Provision into

When you have the GitHub App installed on more than one account (your personal account and/or organizations), the Provision into picker chooses which account the new teammate's Codespace and workspace repo live in. If it's empty, use Manage GitHub access in the header to install the App on your org, then Refresh.

Your team: the roster

Each teammate card shows the teammate's name, current state, and a set of actions.

State badges

Available — the Codespace is running and ready.
Shutdown — stopped (idle or stopped manually). It'll start again on demand.
A yellow busy badge (Queued, Provisioning, Starting, …) means the Codespace is transitioning. The dashboard polls faster while anything is in motion.
Setup needed — the agent hasn't been authenticated yet (a fresh hire, or after a Rebuild). Open it in VS Code to finish setup.

Provisioning progress

Right after you hire, you'll see a Container → Agent bridge → Ready progress strip. GitHub builds the container first, then Central connects in to configure and start the agent bridge — the part that used to be invisible.

Actions

Button	What it does
VS Code	Opens the teammate's workspace in your locally-installed VS Code (via the Codespaces extension). Starts the Codespace if it's stopped. For a teammate that needs setup, this is where you authenticate the agent.
Open in browser	Opens the same workspace in VS Code for the Web, in a new tab.
Logs	Streams the teammate's live agent logs so you can watch what it's doing.
Stop / Start	Stops or starts the Codespace. Stopped Codespaces don't consume compute.
Rebuild	Recreates the container from scratch (a few minutes). Your code and changes are preserved, but the agent needs setup again afterward.
Delete	Permanently removes the teammate's Codespace and workspace. This can't be undone.

Idle stop is normal. GitHub stops idle Codespaces automatically. A stopped teammate wakes up when it's needed (e.g. a new Slack message) — you don't have to keep it running.

Slack

Expand the Slack section on a teammate card to connect it to a Slack workspace. Once connected, the teammate has its own Slack bot identity: you message it in Slack and it replies there while it works. Each teammate gets its own bot, so a channel can have several teammates in it at once.

The Edit app link opens that teammate's Slack app configuration on api.slack.com if you need to adjust scopes, the display name, or the avatar.

Skills

Skills are reusable capabilities you can install into a teammate — extra tools and workflows beyond plain coding. Use the Skills row on a teammate card to fork the skills repo into one of your accounts and install it. Pick the account to Fork into, then Fork & Install.

Managing GitHub access

Manage GitHub access (top-right) opens GitHub's App install/configure screen. Use it to:

Install the Coderbots App on an organization so teammates can be provisioned there and push to that org's repos.
Add or remove which repositories teammates are allowed to access.

Your teammates act as a bot identity on GitHub — commits and pull requests show up as the bot, not as your personal account. A teammate can only touch repos the App is installed on, so if a teammate can't see a repo, add it here.

Firing a teammate

The Fire option at the bottom of a teammate card walks you through cleanly offboarding: deleting the Codespace and, if you want, uninstalling the GitHub App for that account so the bot loses access.

Troubleshooting

My teammate won't respond in Slack. Check that the card doesn't show Setup needed — if it does, open it in VS Code and authenticate the agent. Also confirm the Slack section shows Connected, and that the Codespace isn't in an error state.

Hiring failed / no account to provision into. The GitHub App needs to be installed on at least one account. Use Manage GitHub access to install it, then Refresh.

A teammate is stuck "Provisioning". First-time container builds take a few minutes. If it stays stuck or shows an error under the state, try Rebuild. If that fails too, Delete and hire again.

The teammate can't push to a repo. The bot only has access to repos the App is installed on. Add the repo via Manage GitHub access.

GitHub App permissions we request

When you install the Coderbots App, GitHub asks you to grant a handful of permissions. We keep the list as small as the product allows — here's each one and exactly why a teammate needs it. You can review or narrow these any time from Manage GitHub access, and every permission is scoped to only the repositories and accounts you install the App on.

Permission	Access	Why we need it
Metadata	Read-only	Required by GitHub for every App. Lets us list your repositories and read basic details (names, default branch) so you can choose where a teammate works.
Email addresses	Read-only	Reads your primary verified email so we can identify your account and reach you about your teammates. Most people keep their GitHub email private, so this is the only reliable way to get it.
Codespaces	Read & write	Creates, starts, stops, and deletes the Codespaces your teammates run in — the cloud dev environment where the agent lives.
Contents	Read & write	Checks out your code and lets a teammate create branches and push commits as the bot identity.
Pull requests	Read & write	Lets a teammate open and update pull requests for you to review.
Administration	Read & write	Creates each teammate's workspace repository (from our template) in the account you pick when hiring.

Teammates only ever act on the repositories where you've installed the App, and all of their work on GitHub happens as a bot identity — never as your personal account. Remove the App (or trim its repositories) at any time from Manage GitHub access.

Still stuck? Reach out to the Coderbots team and include the teammate's name and what you were trying to do.