CoderPad interview guide: how it works and what it records

CoderPad is a browser-based coding environment that employers use in two different ways, and the invitation tells you which. CoderPad Interview is a live, shared editor called a pad, with an interviewer typing alongside you and a keystroke-level replay saved afterward. CoderPad Screen is a timed, unattended assessment that produces a scored report with its own playback. Neither requires an account: you open the link, choose a language and start.

The pad is the thing to understand. It supports more than sixty languages, with autocomplete for the common ones, and can hold multi-file projects, a shell, a video call and an Excalidraw whiteboard for system design. What candidates most often underestimate is the record: CoderPad's playback documentation says the platform keeps track of every keystroke of every participant, and the playback shows the code being typed in order, with a marker wherever content was pasted. The pad summary adds attendance, talk time, code runs and a suspicious-behavior section; if AI Assist was on, every prompt and its output are saved for review. Shell commands and the video call itself are not in the playback.

Screen has controls Interview does not, because no interviewer is present. Candidates must enter full-screen mode before starting, and leaving it or switching to another monitor triggers an alert after a ten-second grace period. Multiple-choice questions can give only seconds to answer; a timed-out question is not a fail. You do not automatically see your score; the recruiter decides whether to send it.

Whether any of that counts as proctoring depends on which product you are in. Interview has no full-screen enforcement and no documented webcam recording beyond the optional call; Screen has the full-screen rule, paste and focus-loss markers, a plagiarism check and, on enterprise plans, optional webcam snapshots. CoderPad tells interviewers to treat alerts as prompts for clarification rather than immediate disqualification.

The free sandbox runs the same editor as a live pad, so the run shortcut, the language list and the settings can be learned before anyone is watching. What the sandbox cannot rehearse is the person on the other end and the timer.

The posts below go through the specifics: whether CoderPad is proctored, how it detects cheating, whether it records your screen, whether the editor has autocomplete, how drawing mode works for system design, how to practise in the sandbox, and what the interview format and typical questions look like. Facts are current as of September 2026.