Set up devboxes with your AI chat

The AI chat you already use, for example ChatGPT or Claude, can set devboxes up for you. It reads devboxes' setup pages, asks about your company and your work, and chooses the tasks devboxes takes on. It then gives you a setup link. When you open the link, devboxes shows what it will do for you beside the plans, with the one your AI chat recommended chosen, and adds the setup to your Organization once you agree to it there.

In the dashboard, an owner or admin of the Organization adds a setup. An owner approves the tasks an admin's setup adds before they run.

Get the setup from your AI chat

1. Paste this prompt into your AI chat:

   Prompt for your coding agentCopy prompt

   The devboxes dashboard has the same prompt. After you create your Organization and choose who devboxes is for, choose Set up with your AI chat under How do you want to set up devboxes?, then choose Copy prompt.

2. Answer the chat's questions. The first is whether devboxes is for a team or for you alone, with what each answer sets, the same as the choice in the dashboard. Then come your company and your work.

3. When you agree on a setup, the chat recommends Basic or Premium for it, says why, and gives you a setup link that carries the setup and that plan. If your chat shows the link as plain text, copy it into your browser's address bar.

Add the setup to your Organization

Before you have an account

1. Open the setup link. devboxes lists what it will do for you, from the work the setup covers, for example Win more customers or Research a market. Under Connects, it lists the tools the setup connects, and the address of each MCP server the link names outside the catalogue.
2. Under Choose a plan, devboxes selects the plan your AI chat recommended in the link. Choose another plan if you like, or Free to pay for usage with prepaid credit or run tasks on your own computer. Turn on Pay yearly to see the yearly prices. Choose Continue with the plan.
3. Create your account, then create your Organization. What devboxes will do stays beside the form while you sign up. To pick another plan, choose Change plan.

devboxes then adds the setup to the Organization you just created. On a paid plan, Stripe then opens to pay for it. Starting the sign-up is your agreement, and it counts for one hour, in this browser tab, and only for an Organization you create in it. When you sign in to an existing account after your choice, devboxes adds the setup in the same way to the first Organization you create in this tab within the hour, even when the account already has one. An Organization you created before, another tab or another device shows the setup for your Organization, as below.

When you're signed in

1. Open the setup link. devboxes shows what the setup will do for your Organization, beside the plans, with the plan your AI chat recommended chosen. When Set up with your AI chat is open in another tab of the same browser, that tab moves on to the same setup.
2. Choose a plan and Continue with it. devboxes adds the setup to your Organization and connects the tools that need no sign-in. When a tool needs you, Connect your tools lists each one with its connect button: sign in to it, add devboxes to your chat in a new tab, or enter a key. Google Chat, Jira and GitHub Issues connect from the CLI, so their rows open their integration page. Choose Continue when you're done, and Stripe opens to pay for a paid plan. When every task in the setup is already in your Organization, devboxes says so, and offers Continue with the link's plan when there is one, or else a way back to setup.

After devboxes adds the setup

On a setup for developers, devboxes opens the steps that connect your code: sign in from your terminal, connect your AI and your repository, choose a plan, and start your first task. On a setup for a team, it shows the next step, and below it, while your Organization is on Free, Choose a plan offers the Basic and Premium plans.

Until you start the sign-up or choose Continue with a plan, your Organization stays as it was.

Add the setup from the CLI

The setup link names the setup in its address: path is developer or team, kind is team or solo, bundles lists bundles by slug, blueprints lists tasks by slug, tools lists catalogue tools by id, and mcp lists the HTTPS addresses of MCP servers outside the catalogue, each separated by commas. plan is the recommended basic or premium, and interval is month or year.

1. Save how devboxes guides you, with the link's path as setupPath:

   { "organizationId": "<organization id>", "setupPath": "team" }

   devboxes invoke members.update-setup --input @setup-path.json

   When the link names a kind, save it on the Organization too:

   { "organizationId": "<organization id>", "kind": "solo" }

   devboxes invoke organizations.update --input @kind.json

2. List the catalogue:

   { "organizationId": "<organization id>" }

   devboxes invoke catalogue.list --input @catalogue.json

   A bundle in the result's bundles names its tasks in blueprints.

3. Choose the tasks to add: the setup's own task slugs, plus the task slugs of its bundles. Take the ones whose installed is null, since the others are in your Organization already. On a setup for a team, add the tasks with "needsRepository": true after you connect a repository.

4. Add the tasks with catalogue.install, as Start from the catalogue shows. On a setup for a team, the dashboard binds them to your taskbox, so give its id as projectId. Tasks that an owner adds are approved. Tasks that an admin or a member adds wait for an owner to approve them.

5. Connect the link's tools. For an MCP tool, pass its connect from catalogue.list to integrations.connect, as Connect an MCP server shows. For a chat or tracker tool, run the chat.connect- command for its platform, such as chat.connect-telegram, or chat.connect-github for GitHub Issues. For github, connect a repository with repositories.connect or repositories.github-connect-start. For each mcp address, run integrations.detect, then integrations.connect with the access it found. A catalogue tool's name, such as Notion, belongs to that tool, so connect a server outside the catalogue under another name.

6. To pay for the recommended plan, run billing.subscribe with the link's plan and interval. It answers with the URL of the Stripe page that takes the payment.

What devboxes tells you about the setup

• You choose what devboxes takes on once your account exists: the link names no task that devboxes offers, so devboxes adds none. Create your account and choose tasks from the catalogue, or ask your AI chat for a new setup link.
• devboxes doesn't offer anything this link names: the same, for an Organization you're signed in to. Its tasks stay as they were.
• Starts once you connect a code repository: on a setup for a team that doesn't write code, the tasks that work on code wait for a repository. Once you connect one, add them from the catalogue.
• Only an owner or admin can add this setup: you're a member, reviewer or viewer of the Organization. Ask an owner or admin to open the link.
• An owner approves new tasks before they run: you're an admin, so the tasks the setup adds wait until an owner approves them.

Finish the setup

The setup adds tasks. devboxes starts them once your Organization has a model account and a place to run tasks:

• To connect your Claude or ChatGPT subscription, or an API key, see Connect a model account.
• To run tasks on devboxes machines, choose Basic or Premium. See Choose a plan and buy credit.
• To run tasks on your own machine for free, see Add a Runner.