Create an Agent
This guide walks through the Create-Agent wizard — from a connected cloud account to an agent card reporting Online on the Agent Fleet page.
Overview
Agents run on VMs in your own cloud account. The wizard picks a machine, roles and workspaces; Launch does the rest: SideButton creates the server, SSH key and firewall in your cloud project, installs the agent runtime, and the new card reports Online in about ten minutes. Nothing to install on your side.
Prerequisites
- A connected cloud account — see AWS Setup or Hetzner Setup
- A portal account with an active trial or subscription (the create action is disabled otherwise)
Step 1: Machine
Open Portal → Agents and click + Create Agent.
- Pick the cloud connection the agent should be provisioned into
- Choose a region and server size — machines start from ~$5/mo on Hetzner
- Pick the agent profile (which runtime components the machine gets) and the agent app it runs — the built-in default is Claude Code (subscription)
Note: available regions, sizes and profiles can be narrowed by your account's provisioning policy. If an option you expect is missing, ask your account admin.
Step 2: Roles & capabilities
Check the roles the agent should carry (SE, QA, SD, …). Roles determine which jobs the agent can pick up; they can be changed later from the agent's detail page.
Step 3: Workspaces
Assign the agent to one or more workspaces. A workspace-scoped Agents page only shows agents assigned to it, and dispatched jobs resolve their repository and configuration from the workspace.
Step 4: Agents
Name the agent (or the batch — the wizard can create several identical machines at once). The shared RDP password for the live desktop is auto-generated; use the regenerate button if you want a fresh one.
Click Launch.
What gets created
In your cloud project:
- A server (the size you picked)
- An SSH key for lifecycle management
- A firewall restricting access to the SideButton relay
On the Agent Fleet page, the new agent first shows a provisioning card with live progress, then flips to a normal card with screen preview, status and queue — Online in ~10 minutes.
After launch: one-time sign-in
An agent running a subscription agent app (the default) must sign in once before its first job — otherwise the job stops at Not logged in. Open the agent's Live desktop and complete the sign-in; the credential stays on the machine. See Connect Claude Subscription.
Agents on API-key or gateway agent apps carry their credentials in the environment and skip this step.