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On Google Cloud

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At the end, you have a box on Google Cloud, a Compute Engine VM instance in Google's words, with Docker on it, and a Terminal on it in your browser.

Set this up with your agent

Copy this to a coding agent on your laptop. It runs the commands and checks each step with you; what you sign in to, press or paste stays yours.

This is for a coding agent that can run commands on my laptop (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor), not a chat website.
Walk me through Loopgate's guide "On Google Cloud": https://loopgate.dev/runner/guides/gcp.md. The guides it links to are beside it, each ending in .md.
Run its commands yourself, on my laptop or on my box over SSH as the guide says, one step at a time, and check each "You should see" line before the next step.
These are mine: tell me when it is my turn, wait for me, and never ask me to type them into this chat. Signing in to anything (the portal, a cloud console, Slack, GitHub), pressing Add a runner, every token and password, my AI subscription's device code, and making the Slack app.
If I paste you the portal's install line, run it on the box: its token works once, for an hour.

At a glance

Time: 15 minutes, then Any Linux computer with Docker.

What you need:

  • A Google Cloud project with billing turned on
  • About 25 to 35 dollars a month while the box runs

Steps:

  1. Rent the box
  2. Connect to it
  3. Install Docker

Steps

  1. Sign in to the Google Cloud console, type Compute Engine in the search bar at the top and open VM instances. If Google asks you to enable the Compute Engine API, press Enable and wait a minute.

  2. Press Create instance and fill it in:

    • Name: loopgate-runner.
    • Region: the one nearest your team.
    • Machine configuration: General purpose, series E2, machine type e2-medium (2 processors and 4 GB of memory).
    • OS and storage (called Boot disk in some versions): press Change, choose Ubuntu, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS marked x86/64, not Arm, and 30 GB, then Select.
    • Networking: under Firewall, leave Allow HTTP traffic and Allow HTTPS traffic unchecked. Nothing should come in but SSH.

  3. Press Create.

    You should see: your instance in the list with a green tick after a minute.

  4. Press SSH on your instance's row. Google opens a Terminal on the box in a new browser window; you need no key file.

    You should see: a prompt that ends with loopgate-runner:~$.

    Google's default network lets SSH in from anywhere, guarded by Google's own keys. Leave it as it is unless your company requires otherwise.

  5. Install Docker with Docker's own script.

    curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sudo sh

    You should see: a few minutes of output ending with a note about running Docker as a non-root user.

  6. Let your user run Docker without sudo.

    sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

  7. Close the SSH window, then press SSH again, so the change takes hold.

Check

Docker answers without sudo with Docker Compose version v2. followed by more numbers:

docker compose version

Next

Your box is ready. Paste the command from the portal: Any Linux computer with Docker.

If something is off

  • Google asks you to enable the Compute Engine API. Press Enable and wait a minute.
  • Docker says permission denied. Close the SSH window and press SSH again (step 7).

Doing it by hand

Once Docker answers, By hand sets the runner up from files instead of the portal's line.