dev-cockpit

dev-cockpit

Disclaimer

This is a personal, internal productivity tool, and it is 100% vibe coded. The agent writes the code, tests every feature directly in the browser, and runs integration tests. From time to time I do an architecture and security review, but not on every change. Run it only on machines and networks you trust.

What it is

Manage your projects from the browser, including your phone: run CLI coding agents (GitHub Copilot CLI, Claude Code, or both), open shells, and edit files in a small built-in editor. Everything runs in tmux on the host, the browser attaches over a live stream, so sessions survive dropped connections and you can start on your phone and continue on your laptop. It is the persistence tmux already gives you over SSH, with a web UI in front of it.

• Create projects from the UI; git repos show their branch and remote.
• Start coder sessions, attach in the browser, resume earlier ones.
• Open shell sessions, rename them, run several at once.
• Edit files (browse, create, rename, delete), upload and download.
• Edit each coder's global config: instructions, custom agents, skills.

One server instance serves every coder whose CLI is installed on the host.

Requirements

• Linux or macOS.
• tmux on the host.
• At least one coder CLI installed and logged in: copilot or claude.

The server refuses to start without tmux or without any coder CLI; a coder whose CLI is missing is skipped. The UI edits each coder's config under your home directory:

Install

Quick install (curl)

This resolves the latest release, downloads the archive for your platform, extracts the dev-cockpit binary into ~/.local/bin, and makes it executable. To pin a version, replace the first line with VERSION=1.6.0.

~/.local/bin is user-writable, so the in-app self-update can replace the binary in place without sudo. A root-owned path like /usr/local/bin works for self-update only if dev-cockpit runs as root.

VERSION=$(curl -fsSL https://api.github.com/repos/marein/dev-cockpit/releases/latest | sed -n 's/.*"tag_name": *"\([^"]*\)".*/\1/p')
os=$(uname -s | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')
arch=$(uname -m); case "$arch" in x86_64) arch=amd64 ;; aarch64) arch=arm64 ;; esac

mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
curl -fsSL "https://github.com/marein/dev-cockpit/releases/download/${VERSION}/dev-cockpit_${VERSION}_${os}_${arch}.tar.gz" \
  | tar -xzf - -C ~/.local/bin dev-cockpit
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/dev-cockpit

Make sure ~/.local/bin is on your PATH so you can run it from anywhere; add this to your shell's rc file (~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc, …) if needed:

export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

On macOS, the binary is unsigned. If Gatekeeper blocks it, clear the quarantine flag once:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ~/.local/bin/dev-cockpit

Manual

Download the archive for your platform from the releases and extract it:

tar -xzf dev-cockpit_*.tar.gz

Move the dev-cockpit binary into a directory on your PATH so you can run it from anywhere. Use a user-writable path like ~/.local/bin if you want the in-app self-update to work; /usr/local/bin needs sudo to install, and self-update there only works when dev-cockpit runs as root.

mkdir -p ~/.local/bin && mv dev-cockpit ~/.local/bin/

Run

See all options with ./dev-cockpit serve --help. The main ones:

./dev-cockpit serve --addr 0.0.0.0:3000 --projects-dir ~/projects

The default --addr uses port 80, which needs root; the examples use 3000. Then open the server address in your browser and log in.

Login

The default login is admin / password. Change it before exposing the server. Generate a bcrypt hash with ./dev-cockpit hash-password, then pass it along with a random cookie key:

./dev-cockpit serve --addr 0.0.0.0:3000 \
  --auth-user admin \
  --auth-password-hash '<hash>' \
  --session-cookie-key '<random-secret>'

HTTPS

Serve TLS directly, or terminate it in a reverse proxy: drop the TLS flags, bind locally (e.g. --addr 127.0.0.1:3000), and set --trusted-proxies to your proxy's address.

mkdir -p ~/.config/dev-cockpit/tls
openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:4096 -sha256 -days 365 -nodes \
  -keyout ~/.config/dev-cockpit/tls/dev-cockpit.key \
  -out ~/.config/dev-cockpit/tls/dev-cockpit.crt \
  -subj "/CN=localhost" \
  -addext "subjectAltName=DNS:localhost,IP:127.0.0.1"

./dev-cockpit serve --addr 0.0.0.0:3000 \
  --tls-cert-file ~/.config/dev-cockpit/tls/dev-cockpit.crt \
  --tls-key-file ~/.config/dev-cockpit/tls/dev-cockpit.key

Custom distributions

A distribution ships its own version, source link, and update feed. It is a module of your own (go mod init, go get github.com/marein/dev-cockpit) with a main.go (example below). An empty field keeps the default of a plain build.

package main

import "github.com/marein/dev-cockpit/distro"

func main() {
	distro.Main(distro.Build{
		Version:          "1.2.3",
		RepoURL:          "https://example.com/you/your-distribution",
		UpdateFeedURL:    "https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/42/releases?per_page=100",
		UpdateFeedFormat: "gitlab",
	})
}

UpdateFeedFormat is github or gitlab. The feed must follow this repository's release conventions: semver tags, dev-cockpit_<version>_<os>_<arch>.tar.gz containing dev-cockpit, plus dev-cockpit_<version>_checksums.txt. dev-cockpit --version prints what a binary was built with.

Plugins

Plugins are highly experimental and not yet part of the stable contract, examples will follow. A distribution adds them through the ServePlugins field on distro.Build. See the plugin package for what a plugin can contribute.