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GitHub CLI authentication

All dever-labs devcontainers share a single named Docker volume — dever-labs-gh-config — that persists gh credentials across container rebuilds and across every repo you work in.

One-time setup

  1. Open any dever-labs devcontainer (any repo, any image).
  2. Inside the terminal, run: 
    gh auth login
  3. Follow the prompts (browser or token).
  4. Done — every other dever-labs container now has your credentials automatically.

How it works

The Docker volume dever-labs-gh-config is mounted to ~/.config/gh inside every container. When gh auth login writes credentials to ~/.config/gh/hosts.yml, they land in the shared volume. Any container that mounts the same volume reads those credentials on startup.

Docker named volumes are host-OS-agnostic — this works identically on macOS, Linux, and Windows (Docker Desktop or WSL2). There is no host path involved, so no OS-specific configuration is required.

AI agents

When running as a GitHub Copilot coding agent or similar automated environment, GITHUB_TOKEN is forwarded from the platform via remoteEnv. The gh CLI treats this env var as the auth token (highest priority), so no manual login is needed for agents. The volume credentials are used as a fallback when GITHUB_TOKEN is not set.

Adding auth to a new service repo

For image-only devcontainers (no docker-compose.yml), add this to .devcontainer/devcontainer.json:

{
  "mounts": [
    "source=dever-labs-gh-config,target=/home/vscode/.config/gh,type=volume"
  ],
  "remoteEnv": {
    "GITHUB_TOKEN": "${localEnv:GITHUB_TOKEN}"
  }
}

Note: Replace /home/vscode with /home/<remoteUser> if your devcontainer uses a different user.

For docker-compose devcontainers, add to docker-compose.yml:

services:
  app:
    volumes:
      - dever-labs-gh-config:/home/vscode/.config/gh

volumes:
  dever-labs-gh-config:
    name: dever-labs-gh-config   # fixed name — no compose project prefix

Resetting credentials

To clear stored credentials and start fresh:

docker volume rm dever-labs-gh-config

The next time you open a devcontainer, run gh auth login again.