Managing Your Workstations

Now that you've created a workstation and customized it with tools, let's cover the day-to-day operations you'll use to manage your workstations.

Start, Stop, and Restart

Workstations consume resources while running. When you're not using one, stop it to free up CPU and memory: 

# Stop the workstation
wer stop workstation my-first-workstation

The workstation's disk is preserved - nothing is lost. Start it again when you need it: 

# Start it back up
wer start workstation my-first-workstation

If something feels off, restart to get a clean process state (the disk is still preserved): 

# Restart the workstation
wer restart workstation my-first-workstation

You can always check the current state with: 

wer get workstation

Using the Bridge TUI

The Bridge is werkr's terminal UI. It gives you a visual overview of all your workstations and their status in real time. 

wer bridge

Key things you can do in the Bridge:

  • View workstation status - See all workstations and whether they're Running, Stopped, or Provisioning
  • Take actions - Start, stop, restart, or shell into a workstation with a single keypress

Press q to exit the Bridge. For more details, see the Bridge documentation.

Editing a Workstation

Need to change your workstation's resources or labels? Use wer edit: 

wer edit workstation my-first-workstation

This opens the workstation manifest in your default editor. Make your changes, save, and close the editor. werkr will apply the updated configuration automatically.

Deleting a Workstation

When you're done with a workstation and want to remove it completely (including the disk): 

wer delete workstation my-first-workstation

This is permanent. The VM and all its data will be removed. If you just want to pause it temporarily, use wer stop instead.

Quick Reference

Here's a summary of the commands you've learned across all three tutorials:

# Create or update a workstation/config
wer apply -f manifest.yaml

# List workstations
wer get workstation

# Connect to a workstation
wer shell --name <name>

# Lifecycle management
wer stop workstation <name>
wer start workstation <name>
wer restart workstation <name>

# Edit and delete
wer edit workstation <name>
wer delete workstation <name>

# Visual TUI
wer bridge

Next Steps

Your workstation is running and you know how to manage it. In the next tutorial, you'll install Claude Code inside your workstation and see something cool - a browser opening on your Mac from inside a VM.

Using Claude Code in Your Workstation →

Or jump ahead to the reference docs: