Part 4️⃣ – Lifecycle, Portability & Automation

[shinybrightstar]

You’ve set up the essentials and started building with your team; now we’ll focus on lightweight habits and scripts that keep things organized as you scale, moving from simply staying aligned to making deliberate, confident decisions. Automating cleanup reduces busywork and protects your focus.

🧠 Learning Outcomes

• Publish experiments as new repos.
• Automate cleanup (stop/delete old Codespaces).
• Rotate secrets regularly for security.

🚀 Get Started in 2 Minutes

1. List your Codespaces and spot any “Stopped” ones you don’t need.
2. Choose ONE quick win below and run the snippet.
3. Reply with a quick status: ✅ publish / ✅ clean / ✅ rotate.

🛠 Quick Win Snippets

📦 1. Publish a Codespace prototype (copy/paste)

# Inside the Codespace you want to publish
git init
git add .
git commit -m "Initial prototype"

# Create + push (private repo example)
gh repo create <owner>/<new-repo-name> --private --source=. --remote=origin --push

# Verify
git remote -v

🧹 2. Delete stopped Codespaces (cleanup)

# List Codespaces with key fields
gh api /user/codespaces | jq '.codespaces[] | {name, state, last_used_at, machine}'

# Delete one (replace name)
gh api /user/codespaces/<codespace_name> -X DELETE

Dry-run: find candidates older than 3 days & stopped:

DAYS=3
CUTOFF=$(date -u -d "-$DAYS days" +%s)
gh api /user/codespaces | jq -r --arg cutoff "$CUTOFF" '
  .codespaces[]
  | select(.state == "Stopped")
  | (.last_used_at // .updated_at) as $t
  | ($t | sub("\\..*Z$";"Z") | strptime("%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ") | mktime) as $ts
  | select($ts < ($cutoff | tonumber))
  | .name
'

🔐 3. Rotate one secret (user-level)

SECRET_NAME=API_TOKEN
NEW_VALUE=$(openssl rand -hex 24)
gh codespace secrets set "$SECRET_NAME" --value "$NEW_VALUE"
gh codespace secrets list | grep "$SECRET_NAME" && echo "Rotated ✅"

(REST encryption flow example):

SECRET_NAME=API_TOKEN
PLAINTEXT=$(openssl rand -hex 24)
KEY_JSON=$(gh api /user/codespaces/secrets/public-key)
KEY_ID=$(echo "$KEY_JSON" | jq -r '.key_id')
PUB_KEY=$(echo "$KEY_JSON" | jq -r '.key')
ENCRYPTED=$(python3 - <<PY
import base64, nacl.encoding, nacl.public
pub="$PUB_KEY"
pt="$PLAINTEXT".encode()
pk=nacl.public.PublicKey(pub, nacl.encoding.Base64Encoder())
sealed=nacl.public.SealedBox(pk).encrypt(pt)
print(base64.b64encode(sealed).decode())
PY
)
gh api /user/codespaces/secrets/$SECRET_NAME -X PUT -f encrypted_value="$ENCRYPTED" -f key_id="$KEY_ID"

⏱ Bonus: Compare devcontainer build times

REPO="<owner>/<repo>"
START=$(date +%s)
NAME=$(gh codespace create -r "$REPO" --retention-period 1 --display-name baseline --json name -q '.name')
while true; do
  STATE=$(gh api /user/codespaces/$NAME --jq '.state')
  [[ "$STATE" == "Available" ]] && break
  sleep 5
done
END=$(date +%s)
echo "Baseline ready in $((END-START))s"

Repeat after devcontainer change with a different display name. Record both times.

---

🤖 Feeling Adventurous? (Lifecycle Script Sketch)

🧪 Example Cleanup Script (dry-run & execute)

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

AGE_HOURS=72
MODE=${1:-dry-run}

NOW=$(date -u +%s)
CUTOFF=$(( NOW - AGE_HOURS*3600 ))

echo "Scanning stopped Codespaces older than ${AGE_HOURS}h (mode: $MODE)"

gh api /user/codespaces | jq -r '.codespaces[] | @base64' | while read ROW; do
  _jq(){ echo "$ROW" | base64 --decode | jq -r "$1"; }
  NAME=$(_jq '.name')
  STATE=$(_jq '.state')
  LAST=$(_jq '.last_used_at // .updated_at')
  TS=$(date -u -d "$LAST" +%s 2>/dev/null || echo 0)

  if [[ "$STATE" == "Stopped" && $TS -lt $CUTOFF ]]; then
    if [[ "$MODE" == "execute" ]]; then
      echo "Deleting $NAME (last used: $LAST)..."
      gh api /user/codespaces/$NAME -X DELETE
    else
      echo "[DRY] Would delete $NAME (last used: $LAST)"
    fi
  fi
done

Usage:

bash cleanup.sh           # dry-run
bash cleanup.sh execute   # perform deletions

---

✍ Reflection

“What small script today would future-me thank me for?”

Use one of these to get started:

• “Future-me will thank me for a script that ___ every ___ because ___.”
• “Automating deletion of ___ saved me roughly ___ minutes/week.”
• “A secret rotation helper reduces risk by ___.”
• “An export + publish flow script means I can share prototypes in ___ seconds instead of ___.”

Drop your answer in the comments. You might just inspire someone else (or your future self).

[Aqib121201]

To clean up stopped Codespaces you can use the GitHub CLI. First make sure you have [gh](https://cli.github.com/) installed and authenticated. Then run the following:

# list all codespaces
gh codespace list

# delete all stopped codespaces
gh codespace list --state Stopped --json name -q '.[].name' | xargs -n1 gh codespace delete -c

This will free up resources and prevent confusion when you have too many inactive environments. You can turn it into a small script and run it weekly so your future self does not have to sort through old codespaces.

If this solved your issue please mark the answer as helpful so others can find it.

[musgn]

Life cycle is 7 ledder

[musgn]

偵察機