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Mike Solomon
Mike Solomon

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Automatic staging environments for your GitHub PRs

#github #devops #tooling #showdev

If you’ve ever wanted to paste a live URL into a GitHub pull request instead of a screenshot, a Loom, or the dreaded "the Vercel preview environment sort of works but it's missing ten integrations so basically you can't test anything on it", this is for you.

Ho ho ho! This holiday season, if you're indie-hacking, nerdsniped, or just plain bored, you'll probably be working on some sort of app. At some point, you'll want to share it with someone else. That's where Autodock comes in.

Autodock adds a comment to every PR with live preview URLs for your app - frontend, backend, admin panels, whatever's running.

Under the hood, it uses AI (oooh, AI!) to automatically deploy your app. It's been trained on oodles of GitHub repos, from popular frameworks like Nextjs and Supabase to esoteric ones like PureScript Deku. Basically, if you can write it, Autodock can deploy it and give you URLs back.

tl;dr

  1. You create a new PR.
  2. Wait a few minutes.
  3. Autodock posts a comment with a bunch of links to a functioning app.

How does it work?

You start by installing the Autodock GitHub App on the repo you want to deploy.

Then, mosey on over to Autodock, click on Add to GitHub, and follow the instructions. At a minimum, you'll need an API Key to prove that you're you.

For each repo to which you wish to add Autodock, you'll want to use a GitHub Action to kick off deployment. A pretty safe bet is creating a new Autodock environment when you open a PR and tearing it down when you close a PR. For that, you can use the Autodock Preview action.

# .github/workflows/preview.yml
name: Preview

on:
  pull_request:
    types: [opened, synchronize, reopened, closed]

jobs:
  preview:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: mikesol/autodock-preview@v1
        env:
          AUTODOCK_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.AUTODOCK_TOKEN }}
          AUTODOCK_ENV: ${{ secrets.AUTODOCK_ENV }}
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Roughly 10 minutes after opening your next PR, you'll get a comment with everything you need to know about your staging environment: links, usage tips, etc. It'll look something like this:

Each GH comment is hand-crafted by yours truly. No, just kidding, AI writes it. But I did create the prompt. No, just kidding, AI wrote that too. But I am writing this article. Maybe...

It's just a server

Like any great stocking, the Autodock Dev Box is pre-loaded with tons of goodies like ripgrep, supabase, mise, claude, docker and kubecl.

I'm an older developer, so I always try to keep my finger on the pulse of what kids are into these days, like jazz music and dancing and MCP. To interact with the Autodock Dev Box, I recommend the latter. Autodock's superpower is its MCP server, which you can use to manipulate, inspect, and debug your staging environment. I wrote an article how Autodock grew out of my somewhat crazy overemployed life and how MCP kept me sane.

Give the gift of a staging environment

When I was a kid, my dad gave me access to the staging environment of the hospital he worked at. I spent hours scheduling fake patients for all sorts of unnecessary procedures and seeing if the automatic alerts would go off. Sometimes they didn't.

Staging environments are just plain fun. They let you mess around without consequences, share work early, and gradually grow something production-worthy.

This holiday season, don't just let AI write your code. Let it deploy your stack end-to-end as well, courtesy of Autodock.

Autodock is super early in its journey, so if you have any comments about the service or if it plain doesn't work, just ping me here or on the Discord. It'll give me an excuse to duck out of some family function, so both of us will get something out of the exchange.

Happy holidays, and happy autodocking!

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