The words we use
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Time: 5 minutes to read.
Every technical word in these guides, explained once in plain language.
The run
A task. One thing you want done, in your words. Every step gets it verbatim.
A workflow. Who works the task and in what order, drawn as a track: agents, checks, gates, joins, fan outs and a pull request. One agent alone is a workflow of one step.
A pattern. A built-in workflow on the Workflows page, ready to run or to copy and change.
A step. One station on the track. An agent step runs one turn in a coding tool; its whole final message is what it hands on.
An agent. A persona of at most sixty words, instructions, and the engine and access it runs with. Agents are on the Agents page; a plain session is the coding tool with no persona.
A check. A command your repository declares, which Loopgate runs. Its exit code decides which way the run goes.
A gate. A place where a person decides: Approve, a Choice, or a Lock on a document.
A verdict. The last line of an agent's reply, such as Verdict: approve. The routes drawn out of the step name the values it may give.
A round. One pass around a loop. Every loop has a bound; when its rounds are used, the run goes where the author said, often to you.
A worktree. A second checkout of your repository, beside it, on a branch of the run's own. The agents work there, never in your folder, unless you choose Your checkout.
The copilot. Loopgate's helper, thinking on your signed-in coding tool. It proposes a workflow, or changes to a run, and you press.
The workbench. The app: tasks by workspace, the composer, each run as a conversation, the builder and Settings. On a runner it is the page your team opens.
Needs you. The page listing every run that waits on a decision of yours or stopped, each opening at its step.
The computer
A box. A Linux server with Docker that runs Loopgate for your team: one of your own, in your cloud account or your data centre, or one you rent by the month from Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure), Google (GCP) or a smaller company (a VPS). You reach it from your laptop by typing commands, and the guides give you each one.
Linux and Ubuntu. Linux is the operating system most boxes run, the way your laptop runs macOS or Windows. Ubuntu is a popular, free version of Linux. The guides use Ubuntu 24.04.
SSH. The way you type commands on the box from your laptop. You run ssh in your laptop's Terminal, and from then on what you type runs on the box. On a Mac, Terminal is in Applications → Utilities. On Windows, open Terminal from the Start menu.
A key pair. The lock and key for SSH. The box holds the public half. You keep the private half, a small file, on your laptop. Whoever has that file can get into the box, so do not share it or email it.
A firewall, or security group. The list of who may knock on the box's door. Ours allows only SSH from you. Nothing else may come in.
The program
Docker. A program that runs other programs the same way on every computer.
A launch link. The one-minute address, starting http://127.0.0.1:, that opens Loopgate on your laptop and signs your browser in.
An image. A packed program, ready for Docker to run. Loopgate's runner ships as one image. Your box downloads it; nothing is built there.
Docker Compose. Docker's way to start several programs together from one file, compose.yaml. Loopgate's file starts the runner, the Slack app (idle until you connect Slack) and the temporary address, and a Cloudflare tunnel when you want one.
Your agent. A coding tool on your laptop that runs commands for you, such as Claude Code, Codex or Cursor; each guide opens with words to paste into it, and signing in, the portal's buttons, tokens and passwords stay yours, never typed into it.
The runner. Loopgate's program on your box. It runs your workflows, keeps your code on the box, and serves the workbench: the web page where your team watches and steers the work.
A repository and a pull request. A repository is the folder that holds one project's code and its history. A pull request is a proposed change to it that a person reviews before it goes in.
linux/amd64. The kind of processor the image runs on today. Every box in these guides has one. If a cloud asks you to choose between "x86" and "Arm", choose x86.
The address
An address. The web address your team opens the runner at. The runner has a temporary one by itself, ending trycloudflare.com, which changes when the box restarts; a permanent one, such as https://runner.yourcompany.com, stays.
HTTPS. The secure kind of web address, the one with a padlock. Browsers protect sign-in cookies only on HTTPS, so the runner's address must start with https://.
A domain. A name you own on the internet, such as yourcompany.com. You need one for a permanent address with Cloudflare Tunnel. You can buy one from Cloudflare for about ten dollars a year.
A tunnel. A safe cable from the internet to your box. The box dials out to Cloudflare, and Cloudflare sends visitors down that cable. The box opens no door to the internet.
Tailscale. A private network between your own devices. Only laptops signed in to your team's Tailscale can reach the runner.
A proxy. A program that sits in front of another and passes web requests on to it. A tunnel is one kind. If your company already runs one, your engineers can point it at the runner.
Why a public address is safe. The runner refuses every visitor who did not arrive with a one-minute pass from your Loopgate portal. The pass becomes a sign-in that lasts thirty days from its last use, even across a restart, and Sign in on the runner's page fetches a new pass from the portal. Anyone else gets a refusal and nothing more.
Tokens and keys
A token or a key is a long password for a program, not a person. Paste each one only where a guide says. Never send one in Slack, in an email or in a support message. If one leaks, delete it where you made it and make a new one.
- Install token (starts
lgr_). Signs a new runner in to your org, once, within an hour. It is in the line the portal's Add a runner gives you. - GitHub token. Lets the runner clone private repositories, push its changes and open pull requests. Pasted in the runner's Settings → GitHub.
- Slack app token (starts
xapp-). Lets the Slack app connect to Slack. Pasted in the runner's Settings → Slack. - Slack bot token (starts
xoxb-). Lets the Slack app post in your workspace and match your team by email. Pasted beside the app token. - Tunnel token. Lets your box connect to your Cloudflare tunnel, for a permanent address.
- API key. A paid alternative to signing in to a subscription. It bills the model company per use.
Signing in
Signing in to your subscriptions. The agents think with an AI model you already pay for, such as ChatGPT or Claude. You sign in once, on the runner's Settings → Engines. Loopgate never sees that sign-in; the coding tool keeps it on the box.
The portal and the workbench. The portal, at app.loopgate.dev, is where your org, its members and its runners are. The workbench is the runner's own page, opened from the portal's Devices → Open, where tasks run and the settings above live.
What leaves your box
Your AI model company gets what the agents send it, as with any coding tool. GitHub gets your pushes and pull requests. Slack gets the thread's posts. Loopgate's servers get a heartbeat, your member list and a short record of each run. They never get your code, the changes, what the agents were told or what they said.
What it costs
You pay your cloud company for the box: a few dollars to about thirty a month. You pay your AI subscription as you do today. Loopgate's own price is separate and is not part of these guides.
Doing it by hand
By hand explains every file in the loopgate folder, line by line.