alt Hacker NewsClaude Code On-the-Go
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I have my very fast macbook pro at my desk in my office, and I use tmux and tailscale and git worktrees and I’ve built a notification setup like this author.
Thanks to tailscale and ssh I can vibecode on the go from my phone with this setup.
While it’s great to leave a task running, no matter what I do I can’t achieve the type of high quality work on the go that I can when I’m sitting at my desk.
For me working on a full SaaS.. I just can’t do quality work on my phone.
The only way I can do quality work is to sit at my desk where I’m focused on the work. To play with the result of a prompt, take copious notes, feed them back to the agent, not ship until the thing is polished to a shine. To feature flag the changes, review all code in excruciating detail as though it was written by a dyslexic intern, add all the metrics and logs one can think of (VictoriaMetrics), add user-behavior logging (Amplitude/Posthog) and monitor the thing like your livelihood depends on it. Because it’s a product and you have pride in your work.
All of that needs loads of screen real estate and a keyboard.
So I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same.
This is cool, but does everybody have enough work for multiple agents in parallel?
I feel like I'm limited by writing specs for agents, then by reviewing their work.
I typically spend 30-60 minutes writing a spec, then the agent runs for 30-60 minutes, then I spend 30-60 minutes refining code/ui/etc before putting up a PR, then another 30-60 minutes waiting for CI + addressing automated + human code review feedback.
Author here! Thanks for checking it out.
On the $210/month VM cost - fair point. For me it's worth it because I'm running multiple parallel agents throughout the day, but you could definitely do this cheaper with a smaller instance or spot pricing.
The real bottleneck isn't typing on mobile - it's reviewing the output. I've found 2-3 parallel agents is my sweet spot before I can't keep up with reviewing PRs. Git worktrees help a lot here since each agent works in isolation with its own containers (including db).
And to the work-life balance concerns - totally valid. For me this isn't about working more, it's about capturing ideas when they strike (usually on walks or waiting in line). The Poke notifications let me stay async rather than glued to a terminal.
Although a little late to the HN post, happy to answer any questions about the setup!
Awesome. This really sounds like it would fit into my life, too. For once I really hope someone can productionalize this pattern into a platform with tooling, and pay for only what it needed. As it stands this feels expensive, even if it the price of coffee.
Pandora's box is open; we're moving towards a world where white collar workers will be working 24/7 and they'll be expected to do so.
It won't matter if I'm washing the dishes, walking the dog, driving to the supermarket, picking up my kids from school. I'll always be switched on, on my phone, continuously talking to an LLM, delivering questionable features and building meaningless products, destroying in the process the environment my kids are going to have to grow in.
I'm a heavy LLM user. On a daily basis, I find LLMs extremely useful both professionally and personally. But the cognitive dissonance I feel when I think about what this means over a longer time horizon is really painful.
There has been a sustained campaign over the last few days to push "I use Claude from my phone". I saw multiple posts on LinkedIn already, and now this.
This blog is super sus too. All the posts are about Claude. I suspect it's run by Anthropic, just read the About page: https://granda.org/en/about/
There's an X thread where Boris Cherny (creator of Claude Code) shows his workflow of running 5 CC agents in the terminal using 5 tabs while running 10-15 instances of CC on the web [1] and how he moves projects from the terminal to the web and vice versa.
I don't like typing long messages on my phone so this workflow, as cool as it sounds, wouldn't work for me. My current setup is that I have a Claude Code hook that runs whenever CC needs my input and it uses my Home Assistant instance to send a push notification to my phone. I then return back to the computer and continue on the work.
This works reasonably well, but there is a gap for small messages or review comments. I am waiting for Anthropic to shop a feature where the Claude mobile app is able to mirror Claude Code (not the Claude desktop app) and lets me see the diffs of the changes it made and send commands. I'd use this to steer the conversation while on the go with short commands or prompts so that when I'm back at the computer I can focus on the important feedback that I can jot down quickly on the computer keyboard.
I've been working on something similar: https://github.com/shepherdjerred/monorepo/tree/main/package...
Essentially you run a server on some machine. Sessions are created in Docker containers, K8s pods, or via Zellij (an app similar to tmux). You can:
- Directly attach to sessions via Docker attach (built-in via a TUI). You get a normal Claude Code experience, but multiplexed. The switcher/UI shows you the status of Claude and the PR (pushed, merge conflicts, CI status, review status, etc.)
- Manage sessions via a web UI. Connect to Claude Code directly via your browser. You have access to the usual Claude Code terminal or a native chat view.
- Manage sessions via an app. You have access to a native chat view.
It achieves isolation via Git worktrees + a proxy so that containers have access to zero credentials (there aren't even any Claude code creds in the container), which allows you to more safely use bypass all permissions mode.
This works better for me that Claude Code on Web because I have control over the environment Claude is running in. I can give it any Docker image I want, I can have it connect to my local network, etc.
It's still a WIP (the core bits are there, but it's not polished yet), but I'm hoping it provides a friendlier UX with a similar goal for what the OP has in mind.
Linode will provide a configured Linux box for $5/mo that works well with Claude Code and Termius. I had to jump through a surprising amount of hoops with Claude Code, Tmux and Termius to issue a shift+tab before Claude Code gained the ability to invoke plan mode conversationally
I have an almost identical setup with tmux and Tailscale and Termius, except I'd leave my laptop on and connect my phone to it instead: https://www.qu8n.com/posts/running-claude-code-from-my-phone
That sounds nice, but what happens when there's something Claude messes up, doesn't know how to do something, or when you have to review the thousand lines it added to your project ?
Unless it's a totally vibe coded side project without any tests or quality control of some sort.
I'm just curious what you can build with this setup. It just seems to be the way to create a mountain of sloppy, unmaintainable code.
7 USD/day? That's ~200/month -- isn't that just very expensive? I am probably missing something.
E.g. a Terragonlabs subscription is 25/month for 3 concurrent tasks and 50/month for 10.
It makes sense - i build something very similar for my company over the last couple weeks :)
I have a tweak that allows pasting images to claude code over SSH:
How it works:
PTY Interception: It creates a pseudo-terminal (PTY) to wrap the SSH process, allowing it to sit as a "man-in-the-middle" between your keyboard and the remote shell.
Bracketed Paste Detection: It monitors stdin for "bracketed paste" sequences (the control codes terminals send when you Cmd+V or drag-and-drop a file).
The "Hook": When a paste occurs, it pauses execution and scans the text for local macOS file paths.
Auto-Sync: If a local path is found, it immediately syncs that file to the remote server (using the provided SSH key) in the background.
Transparent Forwarding: Once the sync is complete, it forwards the original text to the shell.
You can drag and drop a file from your local Finder into a remote SSH session, and the file is automatically uploaded to the server before the path appears on the command line. Also works with copy paste, screnshots.
> Port allocation is hash-based—deterministic from branch name, no conflicts:
> hash_val = sum(ord(c) for c in branch_name)
> django_port = 8001 + (hash_val % 99)
> Six agents, six features, one phone.
What do you mean, no conflicts? The probability of a collision with six branches and 99 ports slots is ~14% assuming optimal hashing (which this decidedly isn't).
Easier to use https://happy.engineering/ for better mobile UX
This is a bit too "plugged in" for my liking. If I am in line for coffee, it's usually respite away from work, not an opportunity to do more. However, I do love the tmux + worktree + claude setup. I use this now and I know a few peers who do too and it's very enabling. This is what work feels like these days: cycling through agents, each working on a task, checking their work, unblocking them.
Such a complex coding setup to get rate-limited out after only 40 minutes of development.
Why not use Claude App in GitHub (if your code is in GitHub)?
I kick off a prompt as a GitHub issue, Claude fires away on this issue, provides updates as comments and a PR is created for me at the end for review.
It also notifies me throughout, and I can look at the pipelines to see the thinking behind the action.
HappyEngineering offer what looks like a similar setup, open source:
What kind of things people are building that can be almost completely automatically built like this?
Why not just use the Claude app, and remote desktop?
Why not just use the mobile app? It has Claude Code built in. Maybe I'm an unsophisticated idiot but it works well for me. Some shortcomings with repo management but other than that, CC mobile seems ... fine
Does anyone know what the "Poke" service that this blog mentions is? I'm having trouble finding it on Google.
I currently use Hapi (https://github.com/tiann/hapi/) for this and find it quite handy. I can easily tap into a session on my PC from my phone.
Before that I used Happy (https://happy.engineering/) which is also open source and a lot more sophisticated. It has a voice assistant that can chat with Claude Code on your behalf in the mobile app. However, it wasn't very reliable, and there are other reasons to use Hapi instead (documented in the Hapi repo).
Before that, Omnara (https://www.omnara.com/) a YC company and seemingly a proprietary Happy fork (?) but it never worked properly for me.
Long story short, there are a few of the around, and frankly I really like to use them. Unlike other commenters, I don't find that they wreck my work-life balance. Rather, I can go out and have a walk in the park, only checking in on long-running tasks every once in a while. The diff view is pretty good too. There are many tasks where I'd rather not stare at my PC all day and instead do other things, and these tools allow me to do that.
Been using Termux and iSH on my phones for years. You can ssh to your server or just directly code for the phone itself.
I also used Web based coding environment like Glitch (R.I.P.) for years.
You can do that with your virtual keyboard, voice or a even a physical keyboard via BT, e.g. Corne-ish Zen.
That's how I travel.
That's really nothing AI specific or novel. It's cool though.
FWIW I even coined a related term https://fabien.benetou.fr/Languages/OwnConcepts#ResponsivePr... "extending responsive design to be able to program on the device, any device from eink to mobile phone to device, one is currently using not just to "consume" content, e.g read a Website that is then properly formatted for it, but rather program back that very device"
That being said, if you do want to go that route check out CloudInit as it will help you (or whatever tool you rely on) to spawn new instance on your favorite cloud provider to boot specific instances and e.g. setup Docker/Podman then services, etc with no interaction. Also ntfy can help you manage notifications across devices on your own infrastructure, no 3rd parties.
An alternative might be to start up a VM on exe.dev. Supposedly, mobile access works out of the box [1].
I've not tried that myself since I've only been using it from my laptop, but I do prefer chatting with their coding agent in a browser tab to using Claude Code in a terminal window.
I have been doing the same but with happy. It works quite well for quick brainstorms etc. but for deeper work on a real research / plan / implement thing I think you need to actually engage with the output which is hard to do on mobile. Maybe if I had a better UI than terminus to read and check the remote files I would be able to get more done.
I am also hoping / trying to put Claude code on top of a personal zettlekasten to automate more of my “personal life” tasks and get more stuff done for me. Haven’t gotten it really singing yet but I think that could also be really cool.
I just sent a feature request in to Anthropic to add a mobile app to essentially what's been constructed here.
I love that as we go through our GenAI development journey, we're all finding success in the same patterns.
This is interesting. Particularly the notifications flow. I run a simpler setup with webssh on my iPhone over WG back to my LAN and manage Claude that way. It’s fine, and can handle disconnects (with some big cons). I can run code-server via browser on my iPad and can get all the same benefits mosh provides.
One thing to note: the VM seems like an absolute waste of money. If you are using tailscale, might as well connect back to bare metal VMs you can run at home. Save yourself some coin.
Or just install the GitHub action
Too many options here - keep it simple https://coderemote.dev/ https://www.tonkotsu.ai/ https://www.terragonlabs.com/ https://kisuke.dev/ https://opcode.sh/ https://yolocode.ai/
>Development fits into the gaps of the day instead of requiring dedicated desk time.
I find myself planning and jotting down things into a notebook while juggling adult/parent responsibilities. On little longer gaps I research. Then when the occasional longer gap happens I'm ready to start cracking on my desktop. I've been only dabbling with AI but have found that writing prompts by hand in the notebook and using the desk time to execute them works well. This also keeps me in the free tier.
This sounds cool but I feel like I need to often run the code in one way or another when verifying what Claude does. Otherwise it feels like driving blind. Claude Code already has the web version which I could use from my phone and fair it can't run scripts etc which limits the output quality. But if I can't verify what it did it also limits how long I can let it run before I need my laptop eventually.
Ofc if you have demo deployments etc on branches that you could open on mobile it works for longer.
Another issue is that I often need to sit down and think about the next prompt going back and forth with the agent on a plan. Try out other product features, do other research before I even know what exactly to build. Often doing some sample implementations with Claude code and click around these days. Doing this on a phone feels... limiting.
I also can't stand the constant context switching. Doing multiple feature in parallel already feels dumb because every time I come from feature B to A or worse from feature G to E it takes me some time to adjust to where I was, what Claude last did and how to proceed from here. Doing more tasks than 2 max. 3 in parallel often ends up slowing me down. Now you add ordering coffee and small talk to the mix and I definitely can't effectively prompt without rereading all history for minutes before sending the next prompt. At which point I might have also opened up my laptop.
Ofc if you truly vibe code and just add feature on feature and pray nothing breaks, the validation overhead and bar for quality goes down a lot so it works a lot better but the output is also just slop by then.
I typed this on my phone and it took 20 minutes, a laptop might have been faster.
As an aside have found the mosh + tmux Claude Code experience somewhat suboptimal, tmux's scrollback seems to clash with CC's, and makes copying between windows etc challenging.
It is tolerable on an iPad with Blink with commands to maximise and minimise panes using vim-style keyboard bindings, kind of like an iOS sway.
I wonder when/how to test and review the code though? I mean, how do you know Claude Code hasn't entered a completely different path than you had imagined?
Ive thinking about doing something very similar to this as I've a small 3 node k3s cluster at home but couldn't get enough motivation to start thinking I could just use termux + ssh and installing codex cli.
I do want a setup like this, however, most of my development is on Windows which means license cost is usually higher than the cost of the VM. I could run vm's on my home machine, but even then I feel like the terminal experience is quite poor. You want to have a mobile native code, to check the code/read the plans. So far I have been using teamviewer to access my home desktop which works, albeit annoying to use, plus I don't have fancy notifications. Perhaps a web first approach with a mobile responsive web app would work, that shows the files of the project as well as the terminal.
Setup is still rough around the edges (use an agent to set it up), but clawdbot (prev clawdis) from Peter Steinberger works phenomenally well for agent orchestration and personal assistance. The community for clawd is exploding right now, and I think this is purely based on merit. It’s been a game changer for my vibe coding workflow, and lots of fun.
Not quite the same thing, but I wrote my own agent (as in a replacement for Claude Code) that uses SSH for all operations. That means I can run a very minimal VM (like 4GB RAM Oracle free tier), run the agent locally, and the agent only operates on remote files.
The limitation is that some Typescript builds run out of RAM (even with swap) and I can't use playwright, but still it's been useful.
It's fun writing an agent, too.
I really want to use Claude Code on the phone or tablet, with voice commands only, and perhaps a few simple approval thumb actions. I don't want to type out complex prompt information on a virtual keyboard. I tried setting this up with some of the iOS terminal emulators, and it almost worked, but there was some glitch where Claude would try to start using the first characters that arrived from the voice command.
Anyone have better results?
Jules and GitHub Copilot Agent suffice for similar workflows with less setup.
I've not tried Claude Code for Web but assume it would be similar. https://code.claude.com/docs/en/claude-code-on-the-web
Will we still use "batch jobs" agents in 2027? Checking a Java program and downloading a 10mb program used to be slow things which now happen faster than the blink of an eye.
I'm almost there. I also have tailclscale/SSH/Claude sessions on a VM.
The thing I'm missing is a phone that makes it comfy. I could just SSH feom my standard S23, but what I've got my eye on is one of those foldable things.
Has anyone used one like a laptop? Keyboard on the bottom half, terminal on the top? Does it work decently?
I do similar except I log into my office workstation and avoid the extra fees. I detailed my setup in an x post here https://x.com/bobjordanjr/status/1999967260887421130?s=20 and the TLDR is:
1.Install Tailscale on WSL2 and your iPhone 2.Install openssh-server on WSL2 3.Get an SSH terminal app (Blink, Termius, etc.). I use blink ($20/yr). 4.SSH from Blink to your WSL2’s Tailscale IP 5. Run claude code inside tmux on your phone.
Tailscale handles the networking from anywhere. tmux keeps your session alive if you hit dead spots. Full agentic coding from your phone.
Step 2: SSH server In WSL2:
sudo apt install openssh-server sudo service ssh start
Run tailscale ip to get your WSL2’s IP (100.x.x.x). That’s what you’ll connect to from your phone.
Step 3: Passwordless login In Blink, type config → Keys → + → create an Ed25519 key. Copy the public key. On WSL2:
echo "your-public-key" >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
Then in Blink: Hosts → + → add your Tailscale IP, username, and select your key. Now it’s one tap to connect.
Step 4: tmux keeps you alive iOS kills background SSH connections. tmux solves this.
sudo apt install tmux tmux claude
Switch apps, connection dies, no problem. Reconnect: I can just type `ssh dev` in blink and I'm in my workstation, then `tmux attach`, you’re right back in your session.
Pro tip: multiple Claude sessions Inside tmux: •Ctrl+b c — new window •Ctrl+b 0/1/2 — switch windows I run different repos or multiple agents in the same repo, in different windows and jump between them. Full multi-project workflow from my phone.
Shout out to https://exe.dev for this stuff. It'a a VM provider service. It makes it stunningly easy to get https up and going, has a front end http gateway that does all the hard parts for you.
But relevant to this article here, it also has a super sick web based agent, Shelley, that is quite adequate for using from the phone.
I used it to build a little guestbook thing in ~2 hours, late night in bed in my phone. Link to submission, and my post on it there, and the guestbook I wrote. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46397609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46398115 https://nan-falcon.exe.xyz
I'd also note that OpenCode is a solidjs app, that can run in tui (how most folks know it) or the web. And it has an excellent excellent plugin architecture. The work in this post to build workflows is great!
Is there a way to use the official Claude web app with GitHub providers other than GitHub? I’ve put a decent amount of effort into moving away from there, I don’t want to go back.
I do the same, but with ConnectBot and Gemini CLI. I have found ssh sufficiently good (mosh required some port forwarding dance, that Tailscale may have solved for the author).
Why does this need a $210/mo VM?
This is a pretty sophisticated setup. I particularly like how it uses Tailscale.
I've been using the simpler but not as flexible alternative: I'm running Claude Code for web (Anthropic's version of Codex Cloud) via the Claude iPhone app, with an environment I created called "Everything" which allows all network access.
(This is moderately unsafe if you're working with private source code or environment variables containing API keys and other secrets, but most of my stuff is either open source or personal such that I don't care if the source code leaks.)
Anthropic run multiple ~21GB VMs for me on-demand to handle sessions that I start via the app. They don't charge anything extra for VM time which is nice.
I frequently have 2-3 separate Claude Code for web sessions running at once, often prompted from my phone, some of them started while I'm out walking the dog. Works really well!