askrobin.iodocs

Getting started

You sign up at askrobin.io, get a private Firecracker microVM with Claude Code + the robin-assistant framework pre-installed, and reach it via the cloud-shell terminal at https://<your-handle>.askrobin.io (or SSH, or chat).

Sign up

  1. Hit Sign in with Google on the landing page.
  2. The 4-step welcome wizard runs:
    • Identity — confirm name, email, timezone.
    • Anthropic — paste an API key (you bring your own) or use the broker (we pass-through Anthropic billing). More on the difference →
    • First connection — optional; pick one integration to bootstrap.
    • Welcome — your VM is spinning up.
  3. We claim a warm machine from the Fly pool, attach a 1 GB encrypted volume, restart it once so the per-VM INBOUND_KEY lands, and drop you into the cloud-shell.

A 14-day free trial starts automatically. No card required to start; we'll prompt for one before the trial ends.

Open the cloud-shell

The cloud-shell at https://<handle>.askrobin.io is a multi-pane xterm.js terminal that proxies straight into your VM via shell-mux. Open as many panes as you like; one is marked primary, and incoming webhooks/cron drop their prompts there.

robin --help                      # the CLI
robin jobs                        # what's scheduled
robin run --due                   # run anything that's due now
robin watch list                  # active topic watchers

If you signed up with broker mode, claude is already authenticated. If you pasted an API key it lives at user-data/secrets/anthropic.json — Claude Code reads it on launch.

SSH

Add an SSH public key in Settings → SSH in the cloud-shell. The control plane pushes it through the HMAC-protected /admin/ssh-keys endpoint to your VM. Then:

ssh -p 443 robin@<handle>.askrobin.io

We bind sshd on :443 (not :22) so corp firewalls don't block you. Fly's hallpass owns :22 for our management plane.

Chat (Discord)

Pick Discord in the wizard or run robin run discord-bot-install later. The bot allowlists itself to a single user + guild and forwards your DMs into the VM's webhook queue, where the dispatcher routes them to your primary pane.

Slack / Telegram / email-in are next — see the open issues on the catalog.

Export

You always own your data. From any pane:

robin export-for-cloud

produces an age-encrypted tarball of everything in user-data/. The same command is the migration path off our service if you want to leave.