What is gitpod?

Gitpod Classic is the source code for a cloud-based developer environment platform. The idea is to replace the process of setting up a coding environment on your own laptop with one that starts instantly in a browser. Instead of spending hours installing tools, configuring databases, and dealing with software conflicts, a developer opens a link and gets a fully working environment running in the cloud within seconds. The way it works is through a configuration file called .gitpod.yml that lives in a code repository. This file describes what software the environment needs, what commands to run on startup, and what ports to expose. When someone opens that repository through Gitpod, the platform reads this file and builds the workspace automatically. Because the environment is defined in a file checked into the repository, every developer on a team gets the same setup, and new contributors can start coding without a setup guide. Gitpod Classic supported VS Code running in the browser, integration with GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and Azure DevOps, and a feature called prebuilds that prepares environments in the background so they are ready before a developer even asks for one. Workspaces were designed to be temporary and disposable, so each session starts fresh. The README notes that Gitpod has since been renamed to Ona and this classic version is no longer recommended. The pay-as-you-go tier was shut down in October 2025. The repository remains public as a historical reference and because several related open-source tools, including OpenVSCode Server (VS Code accessible from a browser on a remote machine) and the Gitpod browser extension, were developed alongside it and are still maintained separately.