Getting started

This guide walks through how to create an experimental environment and publish it to a shareable link

Prerequisites:

Access to Claude Code — submit a software request form and follow the quick start guide
git — git-scm.com/downloads, or brew install git
The gh CLI — cli.github.com, then gh auth login
An Autodesk SSO session in your browser — sign into any Autodesk SSO-backed site (ex: one.autodesk.com)
A git.autodesk.com account — sign the source code policy and then sign into git.autodesk.com

1. Install the plugin

Run these in your terminal:

claude plugin marketplace add git@git.autodesk.com:iaas/experimental-environments.git --scope user
claude plugin install adsk-experiment@adsk-experiment --scope user

If you run these commands inside of Claude Code and installation completes successfully, you will need to restart Claude Code before continuing.

2. Authenticate the Jenkins and Harness MCPs

Run /mcp inside Claude Code, or run these in your terminal:

claude mcp login plugin:adsk-experiment:ee-jenkins
claude mcp login plugin:adsk-experiment:harness

Note: When authenticating the Harness MCP, you will need to enter your Autodesk email address and an OTP (one-time password) that will be sent to your email.

Publishing runs through two shared Autodesk pipelines:

Jenkins (ee-jenkins MCP) — builds your site. It checks out your repository, runs security scans, and produces a deployable artifact.
Harness (harness MCP) — deploys that artifact to your environment’s hostname. Harness is Autodesk’s deployment orchestration platform.

Troubleshooting:

If you have multiple environments to choose from, select the production environment (prod).

If the Harness MCP shows access denied or account not found, request access to the EXPENV - Development - Commercial - Viewer package. Once it is granted, retry /mcp.

If the Harness MCP still shows “needs authentication” after you have entered the OTP, or you see “Got new credentials, but harness rejected them on reconnect”, reach out on Slack in #experimental-environments.

3. Add your content

Every new environment comes with a starter page that is published as-is to confirm everything works. You do not need finished content before creating an environment.

Pick the workflow that matches what you have:

Add existing content

If you already have a site, mockup, or project folder somewhere else, in step 4, ask Claude Code to create the environment and add your content to the new repository.

Add new content

If you don’t have existing content, create the environment in step 4 first and the skill will automatically publish the starter site so you have a working link and repository. To add your own content, clone the repository and build from there:

git clone git@git.autodesk.com:<org>/<repo>.git
cd <repo>

Add your pages in the same folder as the starter index.html. Once your content is merged to main, ask Claude Code to build and deploy your site.

4. Create an environment

You can use this prompt in Claude Code to create an environment:

Set me up an experimental environment and publish the content found <here>.

or, if you want to use the starter site, use this:

Set me up an experimental environment and publish the starter site into it.

When this runs, Claude Code will:

Create the environment and a new GitHub repository.
Register a component (this reserves a hostname, but the site isn’t live yet). If you didn’t provide content when creating the environment, a placeholder site deploys automatically. Allow a few minutes for it to appear.
Commit content and open a pull request. Security scans on the PR must pass before it merges — this step often takes several minutes and is the main reason the first publish feels slow.
Build on Jenkins, then deploy on Harness. After the deploy finishes the hostname serves your site.

Turn on auto-mode (optional)

Publishing an experiment for the first time takes several minutes of build and deploy polling. Turn on auto-mode in Claude Code before you ask it to publish for a smoother experience.

Claude Code may also ask you to select a name for your environment and an industry:

Industries: Once set, industry cannot be changed.

Code	Industry
`con`	Construction
`mfg`	Manufacturing
`med`	Media & Entertainment
`ops`	Operations
`plt`	Platform
`ent`	Enterprise

Note: “experiment”, “environment”, and “prototype” all mean the same thing.

Timelines

Phase	Estimated time
Create environment + repository	~1 minute
Register component	~15 seconds
Merge pull request (security scans)	~5-10 minutes
Build	~3 minutes
Deploy	~2 minutes

Queue depth on the shared controllers varies — the estimates above are rough estimates.

Confirming deploy

Every published hostname sits behind Autodesk SSO. Claude Code cannot verify the live site — an unauthenticated curl gets a 302 redirect to Microsoft login, which looks like failure even when the deploy succeeded. Trust the deploy pipeline status, then open the link yourself in a browser where you are signed in:

https://<component>-<environment>.<industry>.experiment.autodesk.com

Manage your experiment

Once your environment is live, see Managing experiments for how to check status, extend, archive, and prompt Claude Code for day-to-day tasks.

Resources and support

If something isn’t working, start with ! adsk-experiment doctor or ask Claude Code.

For what’s built, what’s in progress, or why a decision was made the way it was, see architecture/roadmap.md, architecture/overview.md, and the ADRs.

For additional help, join #experimental-environments on Slack.