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Documentation · Your path: everything on your own laptop

Set up your engine & workspace — on your own laptop

This page covers the two steps that are specific to running everything — thinking and coding — on your own laptop, with nothing rented. It's Part 1 and Part 2 of the full "idea to first pull request" guide — you'll go back and forth between that guide and this one; each note below tells you exactly when.

Your laptop needs Docker and stays on and connected to the internet the whole time CogniForge is working — closing the lid or losing your connection pauses everything until you're back.

1Set up your engine

Your engine is the machine that actually runs your Claude subscription for CogniForge — both the planning documents and, later, the code itself.

1a. Install Docker

Install Docker Desktop from docker.com if you don't already have it. Open it and wait until it says it's running.

1b. Register this laptop with CogniForge

  1. In your project's Settings, go to Execution Targets → Register VM (it's called a VM in the product even though yours is your own laptop — the mechanism is identical).
  2. Click Register — you'll get a one-time install command. Copy it.
  3. Paste and run that command in a terminal on your laptop (Mac: Terminal app; Windows: PowerShell). It installs CogniForge's own small background agent and registers this machine.
  4. Back in CogniForge, refresh Execution Targets — within seconds it should show Online. If it doesn't, re-check Docker is actually running.

1c. Install Claude Code and sign in with your subscription

  1. In the same terminal, run:curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash
  2. Run claude, choose "Claude account with subscription" (not API key), and follow the on-screen link to sign in with your Claude.ai account in a browser. Paste the code back into the terminal when asked. This login is saved on this machine.

1d. Tell CogniForge to use it

  1. Go to Admin → AI providers → Add custom model (this part is tenant-wide, not project-specific).
  2. Choose the provider adapter "Claude Code on your build VM (dev mode — your own subscription)", leave the base URL box empty, set the model identifier to sonnet (or opus if your subscription includes it), and set every price field to 0. Save.
  3. Go to Admin → Model routing and set this new model as the primary model for every agent listed. This makes every part of CogniForge's own thinking — planning documents and, later, code — run on your subscription.
Engine ready. Go back to the main guide and do steps 3–4 (review/approve your plan, then create and connect your repository) — then come back here for Part 2 below.

2Set up your coding workspace

This is where your laptop also becomes a place code gets written interactively, using the CogniForge VS Code extension.

2a. Open VS Code

If you don't have it, install VS Code from code.visualstudio.com and open it normally.

2b. Get the repository onto this machine

  1. In CogniForge, open your project's Repositories tab and click Clone command next to your repository — copy it. It already has your credentials embedded, which matters for the next step.
  2. In a terminal on your laptop, paste and run that command. Don't use VS Code's own Clone Repository button for this one — it can sign you in through VS Code's own GitHub account integration, which only your clicks inside VS Code get to use. The headless Claude Code session that implements your tickets later runs as a plain background process with no such integration, and needs the repo's own credentials on disk to push anything — this command is what puts them there.
  3. Back in VS Code, File → Open Folder… and open the folder you just cloned into.

2c. Install the CogniForge extension

  1. In CogniForge, go to Admin → IDE integrations and click Download extension (.vsix).
  2. In VS Code, open the Extensions panel, click the … menu at the top, choose Install from VSIX…, and pick the file you downloaded.

2d. Connect it

  1. In CogniForge, click your avatar → API keys → New API key, give it a name, copy the key it shows you (only shown once).
  2. In VS Code, click the CogniForge icon in the activity bar, enter your platform URL and paste the key, click Connect. It should turn green and say Connected.
  3. Click Connect Claude ↔ Platform. If this fails saying claude can't be found, you skipped Part 1c above — go back and install the CLI.
Workspace connected. Keep VS Code open on your laptop whenever you want tickets to be worked, and continue with step 5 of the main guide.
Set up your engine & workspace — Claude Code on your own laptop — CogniForge Docs