Quickstart10 min

Give your team devboxes

At the end of this guide, every member of your engineers group has a devbox: a VM built from your repository’s dev container, on servers in your pool, with a persistent home and AI coding tools that never hold long-lived keys. One devbox policy decides the template, size, placement, idle stop and what happens when someone leaves. Each engineer opens their box from VS Code or an editor built on it, the Frazer app or a terminal in one click.

You need:

A project for the boxes. This guide uses acme-staging.
Capacity: a server pool with the substrate-host role, of the project or shared with it, or the Frazer fleet.
An IAM group of the people who get boxes, here engineers: created by hand, synced from Google or provisioned with SCIM, under IAM › Groups and roles in your organization.
A repository with a .devcontainer/ folder for the template. This guide uses acme/storefront.
The Admin role (roles/admin) in the project.

Provision the boxes

Install the CLI and sign in.

curl -fsSL https://get.frazer.ai | sh
frazer login

Create a template from your repository. In the console, open Compute › Devboxes, select the Templates tab and click New template. Pick acme/storefront: Frazer finds .devcontainer/ and builds the template as checkout-api@v1. Every template also carries the Frazer AI pack: the Frazer harness, Claude Code, Codex CLI and Hermes, with the Frazer MCP server already wired in.

Write the policy. It binds the template and a size to the group:

# projects/acme-staging/devboxPolicies/engineering-standard
subjects: [groups/engineers]
project: projects/acme-staging
template: workspaceTemplates/checkout-api@v1
size: standard # 8 vCPU, 32 GiB, 200 GiB home
placement: { pool: projects/acme-infra/locations/us-virginia1/serverPools/vint-hill-default }
perPerson: { count: 1, max: 2 }
idle: { stopAfter: 30m, maxRunning: 12h, schedule: "Mon-Fri 08:00 local" }
llm: { mode: gateway, key: llmKeys/anthropic-main, budgetPerPersonMonthly: 300 }
onLeave: { stop: now, snapshotHome: true, deleteVmAfter: 30d, keepSnapshot: 90d }

Field	What it sets
`subjects`	The IAM groups whose members get boxes
`project`	The project the boxes are created in
`template`	The template and its version
`size`	`small`, `standard`, `large` or `xlarge`, within the sizes your organization allows
`placement`	A server pool of the project or one shared with it; `{ location: us-virginia1 }` for the Frazer fleet
`perPerson`	Boxes each member gets, and the most they may have
`idle`	Stop after 30 idle minutes, run at most 12 hours, start on weekday mornings
`llm`	Models through the Frazer LLM gateway, with a gateway key of the project and a monthly budget per person in US dollars; leave it out to use your organization’s default
`onLeave`	When someone leaves the group: stop the box, snapshot the home, delete the VM after 30 days, keep the snapshot 90

Plan the policy. Nothing is created yet:

frazer devboxes policies apply -f policy.yaml --dry-run

Plan  projects/acme-staging/devboxPolicies/engineering-standard   (devboxes)
  + 5 devboxes (checkout-api@v1, standard) for 5 members of groups/engineers
  + 1,000 GiB of home volumes on pool vint-hill-default
  Capacity  peak fits the pool, one server's worth kept free           OK
            acme-staging's share of the pool: peak within its limit     OK
  Cost      no compute fee on your own servers · LLM budget up to 5 × 300 USD a month

Run the same command without --dry-run and answer y to apply it. You can also review and apply it in the console under Compute › Devboxes › Team policies.

Watch the boxes arrive. Open Compute › Devboxes › Team policies and select engineering-standard. The Members and boxes tab lists each person, their box and its state. When someone joins the group, they get a box at the next directory sync; when they leave, onLeave runs.
Open a box. Each engineer opens their own:

In the console, open My boxes from the avatar menu and click Open in VS Code on the box’s card. The button remembers the last tool you chose: VS Code or an editor built on it, JetBrains, the browser, SSH or Hermes. Once the Frazer app is installed, Open in Frazer app becomes the default. From a terminal:
Terminal window
```
frazer devboxes list --project acme-staging
frazer devboxes open lena-01 --project acme-staging --vscode
frazer devboxes ssh lena-01 --project acme-staging
```
The CLI fetches an 8-hour SSH certificate from your organization’s SSH certificate authority and connects over Frazer Access, or through Frazer Link when the laptop is not connected. There are no keys to copy. IDEs connect over Remote-SSH with ProxyCommand frazer devboxes proxy %h.

What the team gets

Idle stop with a reason. A box stops after 30 minutes without activity: an IDE connection, an SSH session in use, the web terminal, a busy agent session or a recent preview request. The owner gets a warning 5 minutes before, with Keep running 2 h. A stopped box costs storage only, and its card always says why it is running or stopped.
Models without stored keys. Claude Code, Codex and Hermes reach models through the LLM gateway with tokens from frazer llm token, valid for an hour at most, within each person’s budget. Claude Code uses your organization’s own Anthropic credential behind the gateway.
Template updates on your terms. A new template version can notify owners, update each box on its next stop, or be forced by a date. A rebuild keeps the home.
Offboarding in one operation. Removing a person from the organization revokes their SSH, Frazer Access, LLM and Git access and stops their boxes.

Next steps

DevboxesTemplates, profiles, members, snapshots, ports and every way to connect.

LLM gatewayKeys, budgets and routes for the models boxes use.

Identity and accessGroups, roles and offboarding.

Devboxes on frazer.aiThe product page, with shared caches and roles.