Cobalt

Cobalt is a cloud-based development platform built by Amaretto Software Labs that gives coding agents their own persistent cloud computers to complete software tasks end to end. Users describe a change in plain language, choose a coding agent, and Cobalt provisions a dedicated computer that installs dependencies, runs services, executes tests, and opens a pull request — all reviewable through a live browser preview. The platform is actively shipping new features, with recent launches including support for Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, MCP server connections, and a collaborative development environment mode.

What It Is

Cobalt sits between a task description and a merged pull request, providing the infrastructure layer that coding agents typically lack: a real, isolated cloud computer with a full repository checkout, running services, and persistent state. Rather than generating code suggestions for a developer to apply manually, Cobalt lets the agent install dependencies, run multi-service applications with databases, execute the repository's test suite, and expose a live preview — all inside an isolated environment that persists beyond the browser session. The result is working software the team can click through before anyone reviews a diff.

Supported Coding Agents

Cobalt is agent-agnostic by design. Users select their preferred agent when starting each task:

• Codex (OpenAI)
• Cursor
• Claude Code (Anthropic)
• GitHub Copilot
• OpenCode
• Pi

Each agent runs on the user's own provider account. The computer, live preview, test runner, and pull request workflow remain identical regardless of which agent is chosen.

How the Workflow Operates

The core loop has four stages:

1. Ask — describe the change in plain language via the task composer
2. Build — Cobalt provisions a dedicated computer, checks out the repository, and hands control to the chosen agent
3. Verify — the agent runs the test suite and the application starts on a live preview port
4. Ship — a GitHub or Azure DevOps pull request is opened for team review

Tasks are persistent: closing the browser tab does not stop the computer. The checkout, Git state, installed dependencies, databases, and running services remain intact until the task is explicitly suspended or deleted. Multiple tasks can run in parallel, each on its own computer, eliminating the need for extra local checkouts or worktrees.

Team and Collaboration Model

Cobalt is designed for whole teams, not just developers. The platform's documentation describes a workspace model where testers, analysts, and product managers can request changes and review live results from the browser without a local environment or shared agent credentials. Workspace roles and permissions control who can operate tasks, and Vault groups keep environment variables and secrets out of the repository. MCP server connections can be configured once at the workspace level and selectively attached to individual tasks, with each team member using their own authorization.

Update: Collaborative Development Environment Launch (August 2026)

The most recent product launch, dated 11 August 2026, reframes Cobalt as a collaborative development environment, adding team communication, issue-backed tasks, shared computers, and explicit visibility controls around the same unit of work. Earlier in the same week, Claude Code and GitHub Copilot were added to the agent selector (10 August 2026), and MCP server connections were introduced (7 August 2026). These releases signal a product direction moving from single-user agent runner toward a shared team workspace built around agent-driven tasks.