I want to launch individual Google CLOUD WORKSTATIONS when CODITECT CUSTOMERS SIGN UP. the Google CLOUD WORKSTATIONS will be either single or multi-tenant multi-user depending on the CODITECT CUSTOMER desired shared project spaces desired. DETERMINE the optimal way to manage, launch, provide CODITECT licensed access to each CODITECT customer Google CLOUD WORKSTATION with a CODITECT coditect-core licensed instance in each.
You want a per‑tenant “dev pod” on Google Cloud Workstations that Coditect provisions at signup, with Coditect‑core licensed and enforced inside each environment. A clean way to do this is: Coditect owns the control plane (tenants, users, licensing, projects/IAM), and Cloud Workstations is treated as an internal runtime that your control plane drives via API, with one or more workstation configs per Coditect plan and IAM‑based single vs multi‑tenant sharing.
High‑level architecture
- Coditect control plane
- Tenant + seat directory in your core SaaS (Postgres/Spanner etc.) holds: tenant_id, plan, seats, “workspace topology” (single‑user vs shared workspace), region.
- Background or event‑driven “env‑provisioner” service in GCP (Cloud Run/GKE) that reacts to
TenantCreated,UserInvited,PlanChangedevents and calls Cloud Workstations + IAM APIs.12
- Workstations layer (per environment/region)
- One or a small set of workstation clusters per region (for Coditect, likely per environment:
workstations-prod-us,workstations-prod-eu).1 - Multiple workstation configs per cluster, representing SKUs: e.g.,
coditect-small,coditect-large,coditect-shared-team, all based on Coditect‑custom images that embed coditect-core + bootstrap licensing agent.32
- One or a small set of workstation clusters per region (for Coditect, likely per environment:
- Tenancy model
- Default: 1 user ↔ 1 workstation (safer, simpler audit, maps to “developer seat”).
- Shared project spaces: implemented as shared Git/orgs and shared storage, while still using 1:1 workstations; use true multi‑user workstations only for explicitly requested “team VM” patterns and treat them as exceptions with tighter controls.45
Single vs multi‑tenant workstation patterns
Single‑user (recommended baseline)
- Workstation per seat
- Access control
- Grant
roles/workstations.useron the workstation config to a Google Group representing “all developers in tenant X”, or bind per user on the workstation resource if you want fine‑grained control.24 - Access is entirely IAM‑driven: only identities with
roles/workstations.useron that workstation/config can start/stop/connect.[ ]4
- Grant
Multi‑user / shared workstations (optional)
- Shared “team” workstation
- Create a special config
coditect-shared-teamwith larger VM type and hardened base image. - Env‑provisioner creates one workstation per tenant team (e.g., per project or per Git org) and binds
roles/workstations.userfor multiple identities or a Google Group (tenant-X-devs) to that single workstation resource.741
- Create a special config
- Constraints and tradeoffs
Coditect‑core licensing inside workstations
Treat coditect‑core as a licensed sidecar/daemon in the dev image, with a central license server that issues short‑lived JWTs per tenant/seat (what you already sketched). The goal: when the workstation comes up, coditect‑core obtains and enforces a license that is scoped to tenant_id, seat, and plan.10
- Base image strategy
- Build Coditect workstation base images as container images (or VM images if using non‑container configs) that include: coditect-core binary, licensing agent, and bootstrap script.
- Reference these images in workstation configs (
container.image), so every workstation from those configs has coditect‑core available on first boot.32
- License handshake flow (per workstation)
- On workstation startup (or first coditect-core use), bootstrap script:
- Reads environment variables/metadata injected via workstation config (e.g.,
TENANT_ID,PLAN,WORKSTATION_ID).2 - Uses mTLS to call the Coditect license server (
/v1/license/issue) with tenant_id, seat_id, workstation_id, and features.10 - Receives a short‑TTL JWT with claims like
{ tenant_id, seat_id, plan, features, max_concurrent_jobs, exp }and caches it locally.
- Reads environment variables/metadata injected via workstation config (e.g.,
- Coditect-core enforces this token on each operation (API calls, job scheduling). On expiration, the agent refreshes via
/v1/license/refresh. On revoke, server stops issuing/refreshing; agent fails closed.10
- On workstation startup (or first coditect-core use), bootstrap script:
- License scoping for shared workstations
- For multi‑user workstations, tie license to
tenant_id+project_id(Coditect project space) rather than individual seat, and enforce concurrency limits at the Coditect‑core level (e.g.,max_concurrent_jobs,max_active_sessions).10 - Maintain per‑user attribution via Coditect auth inside the IDE (e.g., Coditect plugin that identifies the human user and passes a user‑scoped sub‑token or header to coditect‑core).
- For multi‑user workstations, tie license to
Lifecycle and automation at customer signup
Tenant signup → environment creation
Your env‑provisioner service should implement an idempotent “ensure dev env” workflow:
- Tenant created / plan selected
- Create or update IAM bindings
- For each tenant, create or update a Google Group (
coditect-tenant-{tenant_id}-devs) in Cloud Identity/Workspace and sync Coditect user membership. - Grant
roles/workstations.useron the relevant workstation config(s) to that group; this gives all tenant devs permission to create and use workstations from those configs.1112
- For each tenant, create or update a Google Group (
- Create workstations (if you want pre‑provisioning)
Two patterns:
- Lazy: do not create workstation objects at signup; when user clicks “Open Coditect Workspace” in the UI, call an internal API that:
- Eager: create workstations for all seats at signup; use an “ensure one workstation per seat” job that reconciles desired vs actual.
- Wire license context into the workstation
User click → launch Coditect Workspace
- Front‑end flow
- User logs into Coditect (your IdP, possibly Google Identity Platform multi‑tenancy) and selects a project/env.
- Coditect UI calls internal “Workspace Gateway” service:
POST /v1/tenants/{tenant_id}/users/{user_id}/workstations/ensure-and-start. - Gateway:
- UI redirects user to that URL; user authenticates via Google/OAuth; IAM enforces they have
roles/workstations.useron that workstation.
Concrete prompt you can reuse
You can drive next‑level design/implementation detail with something like:
“Design an end‑to‑end GCP implementation for Coditect that automatically provisions Google Cloud Workstations per tenant and per seat at signup, with:
- A control plane service that listens to
TenantCreatedandSeatAssignedevents and reconciles workstation resources and IAM bindings.- Workstation clusters/configs for multiple plans (small/large/shared) using custom container images that embed coditect-core and a mTLS/JWT licensing agent.
- IAM patterns for single‑user workstations and optional shared team workstations, including Google Groups,
roles/workstations.user, and regional projects/folders.- A license server API and JWT claim schema that ties coditect-core licenses to
tenant_id,seat_id,plan, andworkstation_id, and shows how the workstation startup script bootstraps and refreshes the license.- A
Workspace GatewayAPI surface that Coditect UI calls (ensure+start+connect) and example flows for handling plan changes, seat revocation, and tenant offboarding.”
If you want, the next iteration can go into concrete Terraform + gcloud snippets (cluster/config creation, IAM bindings), and a minimal Go/Python env‑provisioner that you can drop into Cloud Run.
Automate workstation creation via Google Cloud APIs or Terraform modules
You can automate Cloud Workstations creation either imperatively via the Workstations API/SDKs, or declaratively with Terraform resources (plus modules) on top. Both can coexist: Terraform for clusters/configs, API for per‑user/seat workstations.
Terraform: clusters, configs, workstations
Use the native google provider resources; Google documents full Terraform support for Cloud Workstations and links registry samples for each resource.2627
- Key resources
google_workstations_workstation_cluster: regional cluster attached to your VPC.28google_workstations_workstation_config: template (image, CPU/RAM, persistent dirs, CMEK, shielded config).2726google_workstations_workstation: individual workstation instances, if you want Terraform‑managed static workstations.2926
- Minimal Terraform sketch (conceptual)
- Define cluster: project, region, network, subnetwork.
- Define one or more configs referencing your Coditect container image, enabling persistent home, CMEK, etc.
- Optionally define a small fixed set of workstations for shared or admin use; for per‑seat dynamic creation, prefer API (see next section).3026
- When Terraform is a good fit
Workstations API: dynamic per‑tenant/seat creation
The Cloud Workstations REST API exposes first‑class methods to create, start, and stop workstations and configs.31
- Core endpoints (REST)
- Create config:
POST /v1/{parent=projects/*/locations/*/workstationClusters/*}/workstationConfigs. - Create workstation:
POST /v1/{parent=projects/*/locations/*/workstationClusters/*/workstationConfigs/*}/workstations. - Start/stop:
POST .../workstations/*:startand...:stop. - Generate access token:
POST .../workstations/*:generateAccessTokenfor short‑lived connect credentials.31
- Create config:
- CLI example (maps 1:1 to API fields)
gcloud workstations create my-workstation --region=us-central1 --cluster=my-cluster --configuration=my-configurationshows the minimal set you must pass: region, cluster, configuration.32
- Pattern for Coditect
- Have a “Workspace Gateway” service (Cloud Run/GKE) that:
- Receives a request like
POST /v1/tenants/{tenant_id}/users/{user_id}/workstations/ensure-and-start. - Uses Workstations API
list/getunder the target config to see if a workstation already exists for that user; if not,createone with labels{tenant_id, user_id, plan}. - Calls
starton that workstation and optionallygenerateAccessTokento return a ready‑to‑connect URL/token to the Coditect UI.333431
- Receives a request like
- Have a “Workspace Gateway” service (Cloud Run/GKE) that:
Terraform + API together
The recommended split for your use case:
- Terraform
- Define and version clusters, configs, networks, CMEK, and base IAM roles using
google_workstations_workstation_clusterandgoogle_workstations_workstation_configplus IAM data sources.2826 - Optionally wrap these in your own reusable Terraform modules (or use future community modules like
terraform-google-workstationas references).3530
- Define and version clusters, configs, networks, CMEK, and base IAM roles using
- Coditect control plane + Workstations API
- Implement all per‑tenant/seat workstation lifecycle (create, label, start/stop, soft delete) using the REST/gRPC API or client libraries, called from your multi‑tenant control plane.3331
- This aligns with Google’s own guidance that Terraform is suitable for provisioning configs and clusters, while dynamic workstation creation can be done programmatically.2726
If you want, next step can be a concrete Terraform snippet for a coditect-prod-us cluster/config pair plus a pseudo‑Go or Python service that implements ensureAndStartWorkstation(tenant_id, user_id, plan) using the Workstations API.
OPEN TOFU not TERRRAFORM
OpenTofu works for this almost identically to Terraform: you use the same Google provider and resource types (including the Cloud Workstations resources), just driven by the tofu CLI instead of terraform.4647
OpenTofu + Google provider
- OpenTofu is configuration‑ and provider‑compatible with Terraform, including the Google Cloud provider; your
.tffiles and modules work unchanged.484746 - Use the OpenTofu registry Google provider (or the mirrored HashiCorp one) exactly as you would in Terraform, via a
required_providersblock and standard provider configuration (service account, ADC, etc.).495051
Minimal example:
terraform {
required_providers {
google = {
source = "opentffoundation/google"
version = "~> 6.0"
}
}
}
provider "google" {
project = var.project_id
region = var.region
}
This is consumed by tofu init/plan/apply in the same way Terraform would.5051
Cloud Workstations resources under OpenTofu
Because OpenTofu uses the same provider protocol and registry, you can directly use the documented Google Workstations resources:525354
google_workstations_workstation_cluster– cluster per region/VPC.google_workstations_workstation_config– templates for Coditect images, machine type, disks, CMEK.google_workstations_workstation– optional static workstations (for shared/demo); for Coditect’s dynamic per‑seat model, you’ll mostly manage clusters/configs in OpenTofu and use the Workstations API for per‑user instances.535452
Example (conceptual) fits OpenTofu 1:1:
resource "google_workstations_workstation_cluster" "coditect_us" {
workstation_cluster_id = "coditect-us"
location = var.region
network = var.network
subnetwork = var.subnetwork
}
resource "google_workstations_workstation_config" "coditect_small" {
workstation_cluster_id = google_workstations_workstation_cluster.coditect_us.workstation_cluster_id
location = var.region
workstation_config_id = "coditect-small"
host {
gce_instance {
machine_type = "e2-standard-4"
}
}
container {
image = "gcr.io/${var.project_id}/coditect-workstation:latest"
}
}
Run with:
tofu init
tofu plan
tofu apply
The semantics are identical to Terraform; provider behavior and state format are fully compatible.554746
How to structure this for Coditect
- Use OpenTofu for the static foundation: projects, networks, workstation clusters/configs, and IAM bindings for Coditect service accounts and base groups.5652
- Keep per‑tenant/seat workstation creation in your Coditect control plane, via the Cloud Workstations REST/gRPC APIs, so you are not reconciling thousands of short‑lived workstation resources from OpenTofu runs.5752
Reusable prompt you can drop in next:
“Generate OpenTofu (HCL) configuration using the
opentffoundation/googleprovider that defines:
- A
coditect-workstationsproject and VPC subnet.- One Cloud Workstations cluster per region (
us-central1,europe-west1).- Three workstation configs (
coditect-small,coditect-large,coditect-shared-team) referencing a Coditect container image and enabling persistent home directories and CMEK.- IAM bindings that grant a Coditect automation service account admin rights on clusters/configs, and map a
coditect-platform-adminsgroup toroles/workstations.admin. Output a singlemain.tfsuitable for running withtofu init/plan/apply.”
“Design an end‑to‑end GCP implementation for Coditect that automatically provisions Google Cloud Workstations per tenant and per seat at signup, with:
A control plane service that listens to TenantCreated and SeatAssigned events and reconciles workstation resources and IAM bindings. Workstation clusters/configs for multiple plans (small/large/shared) using custom container images that embed coditect-core and a mTLS/JWT licensing agent. IAM patterns for single‑user workstations and optional shared team workstations, including Google Groups, roles/workstations.user, and regional projects/folders. A license server API and JWT claim schema that ties coditect-core licenses to tenant_id, seat_id, plan, and workstation_id, and shows how the workstation startup script bootstraps and refreshes the license. A Workspace Gateway API surface that Coditect UI calls (ensure+start+connect) and example flows for handling plan changes, seat revocation, and tenant offboarding.” If
You can treat that prompt as your “north star” spec: design a Coditect control plane that owns clusters/configs and IAM, then dynamically creates per‑tenant/per‑seat workstations via API, with coditect‑core licensing and a Workspace Gateway in front.6970
Control plane and events
- Event model
TenantCreated(tenant_id, plan, region, workspace_mode)andSeatAssigned(tenant_id, seat_id, user_id)go onto Pub/Sub.- A control‑plane service (Cloud Run/GKE) consumes these and reconciles:
- Projects/folders
Clusters/configs and images
- Clusters
- Configs
- For plans: create configs like
coditect-small,coditect-large,coditect-shared-team, with:
- For plans: create configs like
IAM patterns (single‑user vs shared)
- Roles
- Single‑user workstations
- Shared “team” workstations
- Special config
coditect-shared-team(larger VM) and one workstation per tenant team/project. - IAM: bind
roles/workstations.useron the shared workstation to a Google Group likecoditect-tenant-{tenant_id}-devs. - Mark these resources with a
shared=truelabel and treat in governance/audit as exceptions (extra DLP, logging).7569
- Special config
License server and JWT schema
- License server API
- Central Coditect license server exposes:
POST /v1/license/issue– input:{tenant_id, seat_id, plan, workstation_id, region}.POST /v1/license/refresh– input: existing token or{license_id, workstation_id}.POST /v1/license/revoke– for admin actions / incident response.
- Central Coditect license server exposes:
- JWT claims
- Use RS256/ES256, short TTL (e.g., 15–60 minutes), and standard claims:
iss,aud,exp,iat.78798081 - Custom claims for Coditect:
tenant_id,seat_id(orproject_idfor shared workstations).plan(e.g.,basic,enterprise).workstation_id(GCP resource name).featuresarray and limits likemax_concurrent_jobs,max_repo_size_mb.
- Use RS256/ES256, short TTL (e.g., 15–60 minutes), and standard claims:
- Bootstrap inside workstation
- Startup script (or systemd unit/entrypoint) in the Coditect image:
- Reads metadata/labels injected via workstation config (env vars like
TENANT_ID,PLAN,WORKSTATION_ID).70 - Establishes mTLS to license server (client cert from Coditect’s private CA) and calls
/v1/license/issue. - Stores the issued JWT in a secure file or env var; coditect-core reads and enforces it on each call.
- Periodically refreshes before
expand handles401/403as revocation (degrade to read‑only or block operations).798078
- Reads metadata/labels injected via workstation config (env vars like
- Startup script (or systemd unit/entrypoint) in the Coditect image:
Workspace Gateway API and flows
- Workspace Gateway
- A Coditect‑owned service (Cloud Run/GKE) that fronts the Workstations API and encapsulates your policy.
- Example endpoints:
POST /v1/tenants/{tenant_id}/users/{user_id}/workstations/ensure-and-start?plan=basicPOST /v1/tenants/{tenant_id}/shared-workstations/{project_id}/ensure-and-start
- Internally:
- Plan changes
- Seat revocation
- Tenant offboarding
If you want, next step can be: “Generate OpenTofu resource definitions for the clusters/configs plus a pseudo‑Go implementation of the Workspace Gateway’s ensureAndStart endpoint and the license server’s /v1/license/issue handler, with explicit calls to the Cloud Workstations REST API.”