Quickstart

From signup to a running agent

OpenAgent is live end to end. Here is the whole path — create an account, add credit, spin up a box, and drive a coding agent from your browser. The stranger demo that closed our launch milestone ran exactly these steps.

Before you start

You will need an email address, a payment method (we use Stripe), and your own API key for the agent you want to run — an OpenAI key for Codex, or an Anthropic key for Claude Code. OpenAgent never supplies the model; that is covered in Bring your own key.

1. Create your account

Sign up on the console with an email and password. We email you a verification link — open it before you try to create a box. An unverified account cannot provision one yet; if you skip this step, box creation is refused with "verify your email first."

2. Add credit

OpenAgent is prepaid: you buy a credit pack through Stripe Checkout before any box exists. Packs are $5, $20, or $50, and a box needs at least $1.00 of credit on hand before it will start. See pricing for the full rate card.

3. Create a box

From the console, create a box and pick its agent — codex or claude. You can pass an optional template as JSON to preload the box:

• instructions — canonical agent instructions, written to AGENTS.md (with CLAUDE.md alongside it) in the workspace.
• skills — portable SKILL.md skills, placed where both Codex and Claude Code discover them.
• env_vars — environment variables set on the box, for example your provider API key.

A fresh box takes about three minutes to go from "create" to "ready" — it is booting a real machine and installing the sidecar. The console does not show a progress bar yet, so it can look idle while it works. Give it the full few minutes.

4. Connect and authenticate

Open /app and connect to your box. On the first session the agent asks how to authenticate — choose the API-key method and paste your own key (OpenAI for Codex, Anthropic for Claude Code). The key travels over TLS to your box and is used there; the details are in Bring your own key.

5. Drive the agent

Now it is an ordinary coding-agent session — prompt it, approve permissions, and let it edit and run code on the box. Because the session lives on the box rather than in your browser, you can close the tab and pick it back up later from any device; a reconnect replays what you missed and re-delivers any permission prompt you didn't answer.

Box lifecycle

• Idle boxes suspend. Leave a box untouched for 30 minutes and it suspends automatically — a suspended box is not running, so it stops billing.
• Reconnecting wakes it. Connect again and the box resumes in a few seconds, right where it was.
• Destroy when done. Destroy the box from the console to stop it existing and erase its disk.

Troubleshooting