Workspaces & lifecycle
A workspace is your project running on a real, isolated Linux machine in the cloud: editor, terminal, dependencies, the lot. Here is how one comes to life, how it sleeps and wakes, and what survives in between.
What a workspace is
Each workspace is a dedicated Ubuntu Linux VM with its own CPU, memory, and disk, walled off
from every other workspace. You land as the ubuntu user with your project checked out at /home/ubuntu/workspace. Anything you can install
on Linux runs here, and your files live on a disk that outlives any single session.
Creating a workspace
From New workspace,
pick a repository and a machine size. That can be a public repo or one of your own private ones,
through the git provider you signed in with. On first boot RunCode provisions the VM, clones your
repo, and runs any .runcode.yaml setup commands, so the box
comes up ready to work.
Running, stopped, deleted
A workspace is always in one of three states. You move between them from the dashboard or the CLI.
Running
A real Linux VM is powered on. The browser IDE, terminal, and any services you start are live. Compute is billed per second for as long as it runs.
Stopped
The VM is powered off. Compute billing stops entirely, and only the disk is kept, billed at a small storage rate. Start it again to resume in seconds.
Deleted
The VM and its disk are removed for good. Storage charges end completely. There is no undo, so export anything you want to keep before you do this.
runcode list # see which workspaces are running
runcode stop my-workspace # power one off (compute billing stops)
runcode connect my-workspace --start --wait # boot a stopped one back upIdle auto-stop
So you are never billed for a workspace you walked away from, RunCode powers one down on its own after a flat 30 minutes of inactivity. That grace period is the same for every machine size. Editing, using the terminal, or an active SSH session all count as activity and keep it awake. Your disk is preserved on an auto-stop exactly as on a manual stop, so nothing is lost.
What persists across stop & start
The workspace disk persists across stops and starts. That covers your repository, your files,
and anything saved under your home directory. Running processes are a different story: when a box
stops, services shut down with it. Put one-time setup like installing packages or building
dependencies in onCreate, and anything that has to
run on every boot like starting a database or dev server in onStart. See Configure with .runcode.yaml.
Machine sizes
Standard workspaces scale from Tiny to Large, and higher-resource tiers go up to 32 GB of RAM. Per-second rates for every size are on the pricing page.
Curious how stop, start, and delete map to your bill? See Billing & usage.