Claude DevPod

A reproducible VS Code dev container running Red Hat UBI9 via Podman Desktop on Windows.

Pre-installed: Git, Node.js v20, Python 3 + uv, Podman, Claude Code. Claude Code inherits your existing Windows session via a read-write bind mount of ~/.claude.

Prerequisites

1. Podman Desktop installed on Windows with a running WSL2-based Podman machine

   • Download: https://podman-desktop.io
   • After install, open Podman Desktop and start the default Podman machine

2. VS Code with the Dev Containers extension installed

3. Configure VS Code to use Podman (one-time setup):

   • Open VS Code Settings (Ctrl+,)
   • Search for dev.containers.dockerPath
   • Set it to the path of your Podman executable, e.g.: C:\Program Files\RedHat\Podman\podman.exe

4. An existing Claude Code session on Windows — the container mounts your %USERPROFILE%\.claude directory directly, so no re-authentication is needed inside the container.

Usage

Open this repo as a dev container

1. Clone or open this repo in VS Code
2. When prompted "Reopen in Container", click it — or open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) and run Dev Containers: Reopen in Container
3. VS Code builds the image and runs postCreate.sh (installs Claude Code, configures git and Podman)
4. Open a terminal inside the container and run claude to start

Environment variables

A .env.example file at the repo root lists all available DEVPOD_* variables with their defaults. On first devcontainer open VS Code automatically copies it to .env — no manual action required.

To customise (e.g., change the demo port or base image), edit .env before reopening the container.

Note: DEVPOD_BASE_IMAGE is read from the host shell environment at build time (via ${localEnv:DEVPOD_BASE_IMAGE} in devcontainer.json), not from .env. To override the base image, set DEVPOD_BASE_IMAGE in your shell before opening the devcontainer. All other DEVPOD_* variables are injected from .env at runtime.

Variable	Default	Purpose
DEVPOD_BASE_IMAGE	registry.access.redhat.com/ubi9/ubi:9.4	Devcontainer base image (host env, build time)
DEVPOD_PROJECT_NAME	claude-devpod	Project name inside the container
DEVPOD_PROJECT_PATH	/workspaces/claude-devpod	Project path inside the container
DEVPOD_DEMO_PORT	8080	Host port forwarded to the demo-svc container

Opening the workspace

Open claude-devpod.code-workspace instead of the folder directly — this gives you a multi-folder workspace with the parent repo and demo-svc as separate Explorer roots, plus pre-configured tasks.

File → Open Workspace from File… → select claude-devpod.code-workspace

To launch the demo service, use the VS Code task runner (Ctrl+Shift+P → Tasks: Run Task):

• demo-svc: Run — builds the image on first use (skips build if image exists), then starts the container
• demo-svc: Rebuild & Run — always rebuilds; use after changing app.py, templates, or the Dockerfile

The dashboard is available at http://localhost:8080 (or the port set in DEVPOD_DEMO_PORT).

Use as a template for another project

1. Copy the .devcontainer/ folder into your project root
2. Open your project in VS Code and reopen in container

Security

• ~/.claude is bind-mounted at runtime only — it is never copied into the image or committed to git
• .gitignore explicitly blocks .claude/ and **/.claude/ from ever being staged
• The Dockerfile contains no secrets or hardcoded credentials
• The container runs with --privileged — required for Podman-in-Podman (nested container support via fuse-overlayfs); be aware of this when using the container in sensitive environments

Verification

Inside the container terminal:

claude --version   # Claude Code is installed
podman info        # Podman-in-Podman is working
node --version     # Node.js v20
python3 --version  # Python 3
uv --version       # uv package manager
git --version      # Git
ls ~/.claude       # Windows session is mounted