Connecting your first coding agent

You have been hearing about AI coding agents. Maybe you have tried one yourself. It wrote some code, committed to your repo, and the work just blended into the history. Nobody on your team knows it happened unless they read the git log line by line.

Connecting a coding agent to Dailybot is the first step toward making that work visible. It takes about 10 minutes, and the result is that every time your agent does something meaningful, your team sees it in the same standup feed where humans report their progress.

Before you start

You need three things: a Dailybot account (free tier works for getting started), the Dailybot CLI, and a coding agent that can run shell commands. If your agent runs in a Docker container, devcontainer, or remote server, install the CLI in that environment.

Step 1: Install and authenticate

Install the Dailybot CLI globally and authenticate with your workspace.

npm install -g @dailybot/cli
dailybot login

The login flow sends a verification code to your email. Enter it when prompted, and you are authenticated.

Step 2: Add the reporter script

The reporter script is a lightweight bash wrapper that sends formatted updates to Dailybot. Copy it into your project so your agent can reference it during execution. Most teams place it in an agent_scripts/ directory at the root of their repository.

The script automatically detects your repository name, current branch, and other metadata. You provide the message content and optionally structured data about what was completed.

Step 3: Tell your agent to report

In your agent’s instruction file, add a section explaining when and how to send reports. The key is setting clear criteria for what qualifies as reportable work. You do not want the agent flooding your feed with every minor edit.

Good reporting criteria include completed features, fixed bugs, finished plans, and deployments. Bad criteria include formatting changes, dependency updates, and uncommitted drafts.

Step 4: Send a test report

Have your agent complete a small task and report it. Check your Dailybot feed to confirm the message appears correctly.

bash agent_scripts/dailybot-report.sh "Completed initial agent setup and verified connection." \
  --metadata '{"model":"your-agent-model"}'

You should see the report in your team’s standup feed within seconds.

What happens next

Once connected, your agent’s work becomes part of your team’s daily workflow. Managers see agent contributions in the same feed as human standups. Team members can see what the agent accomplished overnight. And you have a record of agent output that makes retrospectives and performance reviews more complete.

From here, explore the agent dashboard to monitor health status, or set up additional agents to cover different parts of your codebase.