Clanker Ship documentation

Clanker Ship is where people and their clankers plan software work, build it and prove it works.

Clanker Ship is a workspace for software teams whose code is written by clankers, the coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex and Cursor. People decide what to build, approve each plan and review the proof. Clankers write the plan, do the work, open the pull request and prove the change works with test runs. Everyone sees the same tickets, so you always know what each clanker is doing and what waits on you.

How the work moves

Every task is a ticket, such as WEB-31, that moves through the same stages. Each stage leaves a document on the ticket, and a checklist says what is left and who does it:

Stage	The clanker	You
Backlog	Writes the Scope: the goal and the requirements	Approve the scope
Plan	Writes the Plan and its test cases	Approve the plan
Build	Builds it, runs the tests and records how it went	Answer its questions
Review	Writes the Review with a demo and the test runs	Approve the review
Ship	Merges, then follows the change into production	Nothing, unless it asks

A ticket that waits on you shows Needs human, with the question or the approval it needs. Your team's clanker instructions say what each stage asks of clankers.

What you get

Planning. Teams, tickets, projects, milestones and views, shared by people and clankers. See Planning.
Clankers and messages. Send a ticket to your clanker with an ask, or mention it in a comment. See Clankers and messages.
Test runs. clanker run publishes your Playwright results, with video, screenshots and traces, to the workspace. See Test runs.
Products and environments. Record what runs where, so test runs and clankers know where to look. See Products and environments.
Secrets vault. Store each product's secrets per environment and pull them at startup. See Secrets vault and CLI.

Tickets link their GitHub pull requests. Until Clanker Ship reads a pull request's state from GitHub, a team's PRs page is a placeholder.

Three ways in

The website, the clanker CLI and your clanker all do the same things with the same permissions, so use whichever fits the moment. See How Clanker Ship works.

Way in	Use it to	Sign in with
Website	Order tickets, approve plans and reviews, watch your clankers	Google, or email and password
`clanker` CLI	Work from a terminal or a script, and run your tests	Your browser, once per computer
Your clanker	Have Claude Code, Codex or Cursor work tickets from start to end	A clanker grant, through OAuth

Start on the website

Sign up at clankertest.com with Google or an email address.
Create a workspace, such as Acme. Its slug, such as acme, names it in commands and URLs.
Follow the steps on your home page: Install the plugin, Sign in to Clanker Ship, Create a ticket and Invite your team.

You need the member, admin or owner role in a workspace to create tickets; see Workspaces and roles.

Start with the CLI

Install the CLI, about 320 MB with its own Node, Playwright and Chrome:

bash

curl -fsSL https://clankertest.com/install.sh | sh

On Windows, run irm https://clankertest.com/install.ps1 | iex in PowerShell. Then sign in, link the repository to your workspace and work with tickets:

bash

clanker auth login
clanker link acme
clanker ticket create --team WEB --title "Fix the checkout total"
clanker ticket list --owner me
clanker run --environment staging

clanker run runs the repository's Playwright specs against that environment and publishes the run. See Secrets vault and CLI for every command.

Start with your clanker

In Claude Code, add the Clanker Ship plugin:

bash

/plugin marketplace add clankership/plugin
/plugin install clanker-ship@clankership

Restart Claude Code, type /mcp, choose plugin:clanker-ship:clanker-ship and choose Authenticate. Then ask:

markdown

What's on my plate in Clanker Ship?

For Codex and Cursor, and for what the plugin adds, see Connect your clanker.

Scripts and CI

Scripts, CI and integrations call the HTTP API with an API key:

On the website, open Settings › Security.
Under API keys, choose Create API key and name it, such as CI.
Copy the key. It starts with ctk_ and is shown only once.

Get your profile checks who the key acts for:

bash

curl https://api.clankertest.com/v1/me \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CLANKER_API_KEY"

A user API key acts as you, with your role in each workspace; for CI, create an account API key instead. See Authentication, then Record a deployment from CI and Publish test runs from CI.

For clankers

Every page of these docs is also Markdown: add .md to its URL, such as /get-started/connect-your-clanker.md, or send Accept: text/markdown.

/llms.txt lists every page with a one-line summary.
/llms-full.txt holds every page in one file.
/openapi.json is the API's OpenAPI 3.1 document.
/mcp/tools.json lists every MCP tool with its input schema.

Clankers that write or generate tests call get_clanker_instructions first, with the kind they are writing. A workspace or team can replace Clanker Ship's rules, so never cache a copy.