Podman, Cockpit, and GitHub personal access tokens

How I scope GitHub Personal Access Tokens for AI agents, install cockpit-podman, and manage Podman containers (plus a rootless RDP container) from Cockpit on Ubuntu Linux. In this session we walk through safer agent access to GitHub (token per workstation/repo instead of “all repos”), get Cockpit talking to Podman, use the web UI for images/containers/console, and stash a persistent xrdp container you can hit with FreeRDP — so agents and hosts stay isolated if something goes sideways. What you’ll see Creating and deleting GitHub PATs with tight repository scope Naming tokens for machine + agent + target repo (e.g. Hermes + agent-skills) Why “all repositories” is a bad default for AI agents Installing cockpit-podman and Podman stack via apt Cockpit Podman UI: images vs containers, start/stop, logs, console Persistent RDP container ideas (ports, volumes, restart, linger) Connecting with FreeRDP / wlfreerdp against localhost Updating agent skills so Podman + RDP setup sticks for next time ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS 00:00 - Intro 00:13 - GitHub PATs: delete token, scope for a single repo / agent ~20:00 - Cockpit Podman: images, containers, console ~40:00 - RDP-in-a-container, recreate, make it persistent ~60:00 - Pin learnings into the Podman skill / agent notes ~1:20:xx - Wrap + outro ⚙️ STACK / SETUP OS: Linux Containers: Podman + cockpit-podman Admin UI: Cockpit Remote desktop: xrdp in a container + FreeRDP / wlfreerdp3 client Tokens: GitHub classic/fine-grained PATs for agent workflows Agent: Hermes (skills of record in the branding / agent-skills workflow) 🔗 USEFUL Some install commands Cockpit Install commands https://gist.github.com/timsonner/66a... Cockpit: https://cockpit-project.org/ Podman: https://podman.io/ GitHub token docs: https://docs.github.com/en/authentica... If this helped, like + subscribe. #podman #cockpit #github #personalaaccesstoken #linux #containers #devops #aiagents #ubuntu #homelab #hermes #ai