Codenvy provides containerized developer workspaces that allow for faster development in the cloud or on-premises. It aims to improve on current approaches like manual setup, desktop environments, and virtual machines that are administrative, error-prone, expensive, and not portable. Codenvy allows developers to modify, run, and debug code from anywhere through automated one-click provisioning of shareable and securely managed workspaces. It supports various programming languages and libraries through plug-ins and uses a factory/project model to create reusable templates and instances. Codenvy also enables contributions to open source through embedded buttons that allow direct code changes and pull requests on GitHub from within the Codenvy IDE.