Onboard engineers 3× faster with an AI setup agent.
Onboard engineers in hours, not weeks.
nBoard automates developer environment setup: analyzes your repo, generates a safe plan, and runs it locally so new hires ship on day one without fragile docs or manual checklists.
>coming soonInstall nBoard locally with one command.
What nBoard automates today
Analyze → plan → setup → track
Phase 1 removes the onboarding time sink: nBoard inspects your repo, builds a repeatable setup plan, runs it locally on the engineer’s machine, and streams results back to dashboards.
Analyze repo & stack
Detects dependencies, services, env vars, and tooling from your codebase and lockfiles.
Generate install plan
Produces a deterministic sequence of patches, installs, and commands per repo and per engineer.
Run agent locally
Octus executes the plan on the engineer’s machine with checkpoints and retries—no manual scripts.
Progress tracking
Dashboards show successes, failures, and time-to-first-success so you know where onboarding stalls.
Runs locally — no source code leaves your machine. GitHub App uses least-privilege scopes.
Octus v0 – Environment Setup Agent
How nBoard Works Today
In Phase 1, nBoard automates the end-to-end loop for getting a single repo running on an engineer’s machine: analyze → plan → execute → report.
1. Register your repo
From the web dashboard, you register a repo and nBoard generates an agent token. This links CLI runs to your organization and repository.
2. Engineer runs the CLI
The engineer installs the nBoard CLI and runs:
nboard install --repo <git-url> --token <token>Octus (the CLI agent) clones the repo, analyzes files, infers dependencies, and detects required environment variables.
3. nBoard generates and executes the plan
The backend turns the analysis into an installation plan: file patches, dependency installs, and commands to run your app. The CLI fetches this plan, executes it step by step, and checkpoints progress so it can resume if something fails.
4. Dashboards show the results
Engineer and manager dashboards show what nBoars detected, which steps ran successfully, where failures happened, and how long it took to reach the first successful run.
*nBoard automates onboarding, setup, and environment readiness across engineering teams.
Octus v0 — Environment Setup Agent
See how Octus talks to your repos
Octus connects to GitHub, inspects your code and lockfiles, builds a reproducible setup profile, and runs it locally while streaming logs.
- • Repo + dependency analysis with least-privilege access.
- • Reproducible setup profile tailored to each engineer.
- • Local execution with live logs back to dashboards.
Who is building nBoard
Built by engineers from Uber, Meta, and Microsoft.
nBoard is built by infra-minded engineers who lived broken onboarding firsthand — slow environment setup, missing context, and weeks before the first meaningful PR.
We’re currently validating and deploying nBoard v0 with real engineers through Berkeley Startup Semester, starting with an environment setup agent that gets a repo running on day one.
From the nBoard team
Articles & Engineering Insights
Stories, benchmarks, and practical guides from nBoard helping engineering orgs cut ramp time, automate setup, and keep context discoverable.
FAQ
Quick answers about nBoard V0.
What does nBoard automate in Phase 1?
Phase 1 focuses on developer environment setup: repo analysis, dependency detection, plan generation, and local execution with checkpoints so new engineers get to a working app fast.
How does nBoard access my repos? (security)
Access is via a GitHub App using least-privilege scopes. The agent runs locally, applies the plan, and reports status without pulling broad org permissions.
Does any source code leave my machine?
No. Source code and secrets stay on the engineer’s device. The backend only stores analyses, plans, and execution metadata—never your code or secret values.
What repos and languages are supported?
Optimized today for Node.js and Python services (package.json, requirements.txt/pyproject, Dockerfiles). Monorepos and additional stacks are on the roadmap.
When is the Manager Dashboard available?
The dashboard ships with Phase 1: you already get run status, logs, and time-to-first-success per repo and engineer. Additional cohort analytics are coming soon.
Does nBoard support tool X?
Most common tools (npm, pnpm, pip, Docker, GitHub Actions) work out of the box. Tell us which CI/CD or package managers you need and we’ll prioritize them.