Cody — my personal background coding agent

Apr 11, 2026

devlog ai

Cody

For the last few months, I have been running a background coding agent built using OpenCode on a VPS.

I was inspired by Ramp Inspect and other implementations and wanted to see how far I can push it.

I started with a tall order for the agent to be useful and worth investing my time in.

What I want the agent to do

I want the coding agent to handle the following tasks (almost) autonomously:

Fix minor issues like formatting, creating a new REST API endpoint, creating a new page, etc.
Build the project, update dependencies, and fix any errors that come up
Deploy to the given instance
Build n8n workflows and test whether they are correct or not
Inform me when the work is done
Has access to all my GitHub repos and is easy to deploy on a VPS
Use a browser to check the output visually and fix any issues

The litmus test

What would make this agent actually useful to me? It needs to be able to:

Add a new blog post to my personal site
Create a non-trivial automation workflow without my help
Add a new feature like CLI enhancements to a complex Golang project
Add features to itself

Enter OpenCode

OpenCode terminal

OpenCode is a really great agent. It exposes an HTTP interface and you can spawn as many instances as you want. But managing multiple sessions and projects was getting complex, so I built a small script used for high-level project management.

Caddy setup

In order to expose multiple projects on custom subdomains, I decided to use a proxy server. I started with nginx but didn’t like the setup. Then I found Caddy — really simple and straightforward.

Here’s a sample config that reverse-proxies to OpenCode instances running on different ports for better isolation:

*.example.com {
    tls {
        dns digitalocean {env.DO_AUTH_TOKEN}
    }

    @app1 host app1.example.com
    handle @app1 {
        reverse_proxy localhost:4096
    }

    @app2 host app2.example.com
    handle @app2 {
        reverse_proxy localhost:4097
    }

    handle {
        abort
    }
}

Tools

In the default setup, OpenCode can only make changes locally on the server. But I wanted it to use the same tools I have access to as a dev. So I set up:

gh (GitHub CLI)
n8n skills and MCP
browser-use
ffmpeg
docker
gws (Google Workspace CLI)
gemini-cli (for image gen via Nano Banana)

Using OpenClaw as an orchestrator

BerryClaw on Raspberry Pi

I gave this setup to BerryClaw — my personal OpenClaw instance running on a Raspberry Pi — and used it to manage multiple projects.

Results

BerryClaw, with the help of this background coding agent:

Created 2 n8n workflows that worked end to end
Sent 3 minor PRs to my personal sites
Wrote 2 blog posts (I gave it the rough content)

I’ll keep improving this agent, but I’m happy with where it is now.