# GitHub Codespaces

13 Hacker News commenters recommended GitHub Codespaces and 8 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 10 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Recommended for isolated, disposable cloud dev environments that start in about a minute and run Docker; the most common caveat is slow, costly cloud CPUs.

## Why people recommend it

- Isolated per-project dev environments (3 comments): "If you are running these agents outside of something like Coder or Codespaces I think you are doing it wrong." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48894320)) "it basically gives us an isolated full runtime env with Docker-in-Docker running Postgres" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340171)) "you can get an isolated dev environment per project" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48458750))
- Quick setup for new projects (2 comments): "codespaces make starting a new product idea a thing of like 1 minute instead of 1 hour" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48843394)) "The Codespaces setup is a great way to lower the barrier to entry for Hermes Agent." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48357949))
- Good fit for AI coding agents (2 comments): "If you are running these agents outside of something like Coder or Codespaces I think you are doing it wrong." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48894320)) "Codespaces specifically is quite good for agent heavy teams" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47488735))
- Used daily for development work (2 comments): "I literally do all of my work via GitHub Codespaces" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49635996)) "For development work I use GitHub Codespaces" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49541604))

## What people warn about

- Buggy and broken in places (2 comments): "GitHub Codespaces has a critical bug that makes the copilot terminal integration unusable after 1 prompt" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46979932)) "it's broken six ways from Sunday" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46858162))
- Proprietary lock-in concerns (2 comments): "why not totally capture everyone into developing just with GitHub Codespaces?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46097868)) "I am against proprietary SAAS online in browser dependencies." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48461065))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Coder](https://hackerapproved.com/p/coder.md): 12 recommend
- [Boxes.dev](https://hackerapproved.com/p/boxes-dev.md): 9 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://github.com/features/codespaces)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "GitHub Codespaces", https://hackerapproved.com/p/github-codespaces/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).