Ephemerals Branch Environment Lifecycle Management (Delivery)

Ephemerals Branch Environment Lifecycle Management (Delivery)

1. 01

   Create an Ephemerals organization and connect your agency's GitHub organization

   In the Ephemerals dashboard, navigate to Organization Settings and link your GitHub account. This allows per-branch environments to be provisioned automatically for each repository.

2. 02

   Configure branch-per-environment rules

   In the repository settings, enable the rule that every Git branch gets a dedicated machine. This ensures parallel agent-assisted development without local resource contention.

3. 03

   Set up AWS Systems Manager integration

   Under Security Settings, configure AWS Systems Manager for zero-inbound-port access. This secures the environment while allowing browser terminal and SSH access.

4. 04

   Define CLAUDE.md and MCP servers for the coding agent

   In each repository, create a CLAUDE.md file and configure MCP servers to guide Claude Code's behavior. This ensures the agent follows client-specific coding standards and uses the right tools.

5. 05

   Inject Claude API key or subscription credentials

   In the Ephemerals environment settings, add the Claude API key or subscription details. Since Ephemerals does not proxy tokens, each developer must have their own credentials for the integrated Claude Code agent.

6. 06

   Launch a test branch and verify preview URLs

   Create a test branch and confirm that per-port preview URLs are generated. Use the browser terminal to run the application and validate that the environment is fully functional.

7. 07

   Monitor compute usage and set budget alerts

   In the Billing section, review compute metering per second and set alerts for usage thresholds. This prevents unexpected costs for the agency or client, especially with add-on machines like the 16 vCPU / 32 GB hour at $1.44.

8. 08

   Automate environment reaping on PR merge

   Ensure that the environment is automatically destroyed when the pull request merges. This cleans up all secrets and prevents lingering compute charges, a key security feature of Ephemerals.