The interview environment is a URL

A take-home challenge as a URL. The candidate clicks; VS Code loads with the repo open, dependencies installed, dev server already running. The container is a snapshot clone: same starting state for every candidate, no setup drift, no "works on my machine."

The interviewer wants to watch progress without breathing down a neck. She opens the same container with a different instance ID. Her own VS Code, same filesystem. When the candidate saves, her editor refreshes. When the candidate runs tests, the dev server logs in her terminal. She doesn't see keystrokes. She sees the artifact: files saved, commits made, app working or not.

When time's up, snapshot the final state. Review tomorrow, start the next candidate from the same clean clone.

The candidate wrote code. The interviewer watched the room, not the cursor.