Depot is a programmable CI engine and container build service created by Depot Technologies Inc. to solve the latency and reliability issues inherent in traditional build pipelines. Designed for modern engineering teams and agentic workflows, Depot provides an infrastructure layer that significantly accelerates Docker image builds and CI execution through advanced caching, parallel execution, and high-performance compute resources. By providing a platform where code velocity is not hindered by sluggish build systems, Depot helps organizations ship software faster while reducing costs through granular, per-second billing.

The core functionality of Depot revolves around its programmable CI engine, which serves as a drop-in replacement for existing GitHub Actions workflows. It optimizes the entire pipeline process by executing steps in parallel, leveraging built-in distributed caching, and allowing users to define custom images to eliminate repetitive setup time. Depot handles the orchestration and compute provisioning, enabling developers to shift focus from maintaining CI runners to shipping features. The service is fully API-driven, meaning that everything from triggering workflows and managing secrets to debugging failed jobs can be handled programmatically via the CLI, API, or automated AI coding agents.

Some of the key features are:

• Programmable CI Engine: A highly efficient CI runner that executes existing GitHub Actions workflows with significantly reduced start times.
• Remote Container Builds: Accelerated Docker image builds featuring persistent layer caching and native support for both Intel and Arm architectures.
• SSH Debugging: The ability to securely SSH into running CI jobs in real-time, enabling developers to inspect environments and troubleshoot failures without re-running entire pipelines.
• Per-Second Billing: Cost-efficient pricing that charges only for actual compute time used, eliminating the need to pay for idle runner capacity or deal with minute-based rounding.
• Parallel Step Execution: Capability to run independent workflow steps in parallel within a single job to further reduce overall build duration.
• Agent-Ready API: A robust CLI and API design that allows AI coding agents to trigger builds, monitor logs, and diagnose failures autonomously.
• Custom Environment Images: Support for pre-configuring build environments with required dependencies to slash setup overhead.
• Distributed Remote Caching: High-performance caching solutions for popular build ecosystems including Bazel, Go, Gradle, and Turborepo.

Depot operates by offloading your CI and build tasks to its managed infrastructure. Users can either migrate existing workflows by pointing them to Depot or use the CLI to trigger container builds directly. The platform provides detailed observability metrics, logs, and a diagnose command that interprets failures for the user. Because it is designed to be fully compatible with established CI syntaxes, integrating Depot into an existing development process is often a seamless transition that delivers immediate performance improvements.

Some common use cases include:

• Accelerating Docker Image Builds: Replacing slow native build commands to drastically reduce time-to-production for containerized applications.
• Optimizing CI Pipelines: Improving the feedback loop for development teams by reducing build times and CI queue latency.
• Agentic Engineering Workflows: Enabling autonomous AI agents to manage build tasks, debug failures, and interact with CI infrastructure programmatically.
• Multi-Architecture Builds: Efficiently building and pushing container images for multiple processor architectures (Intel and Arm) simultaneously without relying on slow emulation.
• Reducing CI Infrastructure Costs: Moving from fixed-cost or idle-billing models to a per-second usage-based model for better financial efficiency.