Stop Doom Scrolling, Start Doom Coding: Build via the terminal from your phone

https://github.com/rberg27/doom-coding

by rbergamini27 • 7 months ago

577 405 7 months ago

github.com

I used Tailscale, an old laptop, Claude Code, and Termius to code from my phone anywhere I have Internet connection.

Great for parties where you rather be home tinkering.

leetrout• 7 months ago

Just because you can doesn't mean you should. But congrats on launching!

scottbez14• 7 months ago

It’s a simple idea but one that hadn’t occurred to me yet.

I spend hours each week riding transit, and use Claude for a bunch of side projects and have Tailscale set up already, so looks like I’ll be giving this a try this week!

Doom coding might be doomed while I’m in the transbay tube though, with awful cell service…

How’s the diff review? I rely heavily on the vs code integration for nice side by side diffs, so losing that might be a problem unless there’s some way to launch the diffs into a separate diff viewer app on the phone.

worksonmine• 7 months ago

I would guess a phone is way too small for side by side diffs, and a simple `git diff` would probably be more useful. If you want better syntax highlighting you could setup bat[0] as your difftool. If you insist on a side-by-side view (neo)vim has a diff mode with the -d flag. It is also possible to setup as the difftool that git uses.

[0] https://github.com/sharkdp/bat

scottbez14• 7 months ago

Heh, many years ago I actually started writing a dedicated diff viewer app for Android [0] that specifically had synchronized horizontal scrolling between the two sides, and I remember finding it relatively usable in landscape, and I’m sure modern phones with larger and higher density screens would be even better.

But yeah, you definitely need a native experience to make side by side diffs viable on mobile.

[0] https://github.com/scottbez1/superdiff — I wish I had recorded some videos of the app back then. My code review workflow back then eventually stopped including diff attachments on code review emails, so I abandoned development on it.

ectospheno• 7 months ago

I don’t compile from my phone but I do write code using it. I use fossil for version control. The in browser editor is good enough to get ideas down. It has great diffs which is also nice. I will check in code and move it to a branch then revisit it when I’m home.

rbergamini2721• 7 months ago

Let me know how it goes! From the comments above, seems like you can use tmux to keep persistent sessions when you lose Internet connection - but I haven't tried myself.

Diff review is alright. I'm an amateur programmer. Sometimes I don't look at the code claude generates, but when I'm troubleshooting a bug, I'll ask claude to output all recent changes - which satisfies my untrained eye.

duskdozer5• 7 months ago

https://github.com/dandavison/delta

OakNinja2• 7 months ago

Please mask your identifiers, unless they are already spoofed. You potentially give out a lot of your info to bad actors.

Other than that, love it :)

rbergamini2721• 7 months ago

Thanks! I did not sppof! I thought that since it was my local Tailnet, only devices on that net could connect. I just rebuilt the network as a precaution.

OakNinja2• 7 months ago

Most of the time it's probably fine, but we should assume we don't know about all the attack vectors bad actors might use, so better safe than sorry.

I forgot to say that I _absolutely loved_ the photos!

lifetimerubyist• 7 months ago

ha, I've recently been studying the original DOOM source code - does that count?

llmslave2• 7 months ago

Yes

bpev• 7 months ago

Those demo photos are fantastic

rbergamini2721• 7 months ago

Thank you! My wife was concerned, I'm glad someone out there appreciates the humor

Aldipower• 7 months ago

Coding on a phone really isn't something new. With tmux a lot of people created crazy things directly on their phone. In some countries this even is the only possibility to code at all, because there are no laptops.

The example use case images are very funny though! :-)

epolanski2• 7 months ago

Which countries in the world don't sell laptops?

robertfw• 7 months ago

there are going to be quite a lot of places where getting a laptop is a considerable expense

guywithahat2• 7 months ago

I assume he means people are too poor to have multiple devices, and if you only have one it's probably a phone. That said I'm dubious anyone who only has a phone is doing meaningful coding

gmueckl• 7 months ago

There are countries where the market for PCs and laptops is really tiny and the stores sell them at markups compared to US/European prices. Many of these countries are low wage countries, too, so these markups have a big impact on affordability.

cyberrock2• 7 months ago

Having the means doesn't mean the would-be programmer is in charge of the purse. I got my start coding at the local library because my parents wouldn't get me my own computer until I was in high school.

auspiv• 7 months ago

Using this with tmux and various VPN tech. Main issue is scrolling. Termius + tmux don't scroll very well. And I've been led to believe tmux is necessary to keep sessions open when I turn off my phone screen

qaboutthat2• 7 months ago

I had this exact issue. I switched to Blink on iOS which seems inferior to Termius in every way except that scrolling tmux actually works.

carloscabanero3• 6 months ago

I’m the Blink developer and really curious. Which way do you think Blink is inferior? I think the ssh/mosh tooling is way more powerful, keyboard config, etc. But would love to improve what I can. Currently working on new UI and better access to hosts, so it is a good time.

fragmede6• 7 months ago

Yes, you need tmux/similar to keep things running.

sigseg1v• 7 months ago

In `~/.tmux.conf` try adding `set -g mouse on`, for mouse scrolling

stets• 7 months ago

try setting set -g mouse on in your tmux config. With this I'm able to scroll up by using two fingers in termius.

rbergamini2721• 7 months ago

Scrolling is quite jenky with Termius - I thought there's a way to keep sessions going when there are intermittent drops in connection via Termius, but for how I've been building, when I lose connection I just restart claude and reexplain the context of the task.

fragmede6• 7 months ago

you missed the part where you're using tmux to have the same session between your phone and your laptop

rbergamini2721• 7 months ago

Just learned about tmux lol - thank you for this!

cliffaust• 7 months ago

I remember when I started learning coding, and didn't have a computer. I literally used to use my phone to write code - terrible experience, but I was determined

fragmede6• 7 months ago

I remember when I started learning coding. I didn't have the Internet. It was also terrible and I was also determined.

Bridged77562• 7 months ago

When I started learning coding I had to write my C code on paper and have it sent by mule to the nearby city where the only computer in the area existed. Only a week later I would hear back the result of my programs.

esafak• 7 months ago

Imagine doing that on a time share system through a rotary phone...

themadturk• 7 months ago

It wasn't coding, but tech support...I was on vacation from my law office IT job. All I had was my PalmPilot, the clip-on modem, and my sister's landline phone system. I spent 2-3 hours one day exchanging email with my firm's law librarian (the only other semi-technical person in the firm) troubleshooting some odd network problem. We got it done, but it was torture, tapping out messages with the Palm's stylus.

wahnfrieden• 7 months ago

I wrote C with a compiler running on my Palm Pilot well before smartphones existed yet

mattlutze• 7 months ago

I remember having some kind of a shell app on my iPod Touch in college and needing to run and find wifi a few times to troubleshoot something at a job I was student working at.

They were fun times :D

gxs• 7 months ago

Luckily I think in this day and age it’d be more viable and not as miserable as an experience - dare I say more accessible

You can connect an external keyboard to your phone and if you can swing getting a cheap IPS panel that displays text clearly enough, you’d have a working set up

Anyway, kudos to you, I love reading stories about determination

Bridged77562• 7 months ago

When I started learning coding, we had to run 50 kilometers through dense jungle, fight Jaguars and jump over snakes, to get to the only computer in the region. I saw a lot of friends die during the daily journey. The teacher was a shaman too, very knowledgeable on C. He would teach us rituals and stuff.

9dev3• 7 months ago

That's cute! I had to cross the Darién in both directions to get there!

FooBarWidget3• 7 months ago

Does this approach work for anyone? For my life, I've found that if I'm not behind the computer then I'm not in a productive situation anyway, even with AI access. I don't have a setting where I can concentrate for a long time and think clearly. For examole when watching children, doing groceries, during transit (probably have to change train in 20m, or walking to next destination). No convenient access to a notepad and pen. On a phone it's also inconvenient to do research.

For me personally I've found two better uses of in-between time:

1. Micro exercises. Really important for health and longevity, especially when it's hard to find dedicated time for exercise.

2. Resting. This means no phone. Yeah hard to resist doom scrolling. Just relaxing muscles and breathing exercises, calming down the nervous system. Increases long term resillience and reduces stress.

So I'm a bit puzzled. If you are in a situation where you can concentrate, why not just pull out a laptop? Typing on phone is really annoying. Even complex conversations with AI I prefer doing on a laptop.

Perhaps there are coding tasks where the prompt is not too complex and it's more about writing code. But you still have to review the result. That's even more annoying on a phone than writing text.

jebarker• 7 months ago

I feel similarly. I am happiest and healthiest all round when I focus on the one thing I have chosen to do at any given time rather than figuring out ways to multi-task.

I do however enjoy choosing to do math/coding adjacent activities for leisure or learning sometimes when I'm away from the computer. I've found that it was a net positive in my life to add in puzzles/exercises that I can do with pen and paper in those circumstances.

yoz-y2• 7 months ago

It worked for me for finishing my app (vps+shellfish+gemini-cli), I've done a lot of coding like this on the train and in between sets in the gym, picking up on the more complicated stuff when at home.

But also all of the changes I made from the phone were incremental.

rbergamini2721• 7 months ago

^^ I probably rely on AI slop than most people on this thread. I've found with the gaps with waiting on Claude Code output match the frequency I'm already checking my phone out of addiction. By no means the healthiest way to spend my time, but if I wanted to spin up a simple website or build out the framework for a project doom coding works for me!

Agreed 100% there are healthier uses of my time!

FooBarWidget3• 7 months ago

In between sets!? I've found that if I do any activity in between sets (like watching Twitter) I'll just end up spending way too much and then make the exercise session super long. Also I can't focus and write a serious prompt or review serious results in just or 3 minutes. But maybe it works if the app is sonething you've recently worked on and you already have very clearly in your mind what you want, it just needs to be done.

jcul• 7 months ago

Yeah, even if I'm on a plane or a train I probably wouldn't pull out my laptop.

Lack of space, vibrations etc. even though I can do a lot of work offline if the internet is spotty. It's just not enjoyable.

I prefer to read or chill out.

I kind of envy people who are like oh yeah I coded the feature on the flight... I can't really get in the zone in that environment.

Saying that, I assumed this post was a joke. ssh to a work machine or a personal machine through a VPN is not new, even if you happen to run claude code in that terminal.

I'm interested in these "micro exercises".

FooBarWidget3• 7 months ago

Micro exercises: It's nothing fancy. While walking in the park, watching the kids play, waiting in a queue or in the train or something, when you have a minute to spare, you can do wall push ups, isometrics, leg raises, step jacks, squats, row pull with your jacket against a pole, etc. Exercises that don't require equipment. If you get an exercise band then you can carry it with you (very light and compact) and then there will be more types of exercises you can do. This will raise some looks, but they tend not to be negative, some people even praise me for staying active in unusual contexts.

Another thing I can recommend is Chinese style radio calisthenics (guang bo ti cao, look it up on Youtube, all Chinese people learn it in primary school and do them daily at school). Full body cardio like and stretching exercises that you can do while staying in one place (you just need space around you). Takes 5-10m, better warming up than just walking and swinging arms and covers a lot of basic things. The entire approach seems virtually unknown in the west.

dinkumthinkum2• 7 months ago

I think the problem you are having is that you are actually thinking clearly and rationally and are not suffering from this incessant brain rot that is the new normal.

jfroma• 7 months ago

I do the same but my unifi network gives me a vpn out of the box.

chankstein38• 7 months ago

If you're on Android and can download QPython, it works just fine and has for years. This seems way overcomplicated, it depends on a remote computer that's on 24/7? Ick.

rbergamini2721• 7 months ago

Sadly I'm an iPhone kid - and yeah the 24/7 computer running is not ideal. It's been nice building on the server that I'm using to host the app, but then again I could just run the Dockerfiles via QPython and push the code via git?

PopePompus4• 7 months ago

Also, if your Android phone is a Pixel, you can run the recently added Terminal app, which runs a plain vanilla Debian distribution within a VM. So you then have a pocketable Linux machine to develop code on. Not only does Python run on it, you can install the entire Anaconda Python suite.

gloxkiqcza• 7 months ago

Wow, that’s cool! I wonder whether one day Apple is going to allow something like this with headless “macOS” VM on iPadOS to make it a viable local development platform.

cess112• 7 months ago

Why would that be preferable to Termux?

manx• 7 months ago

Also, you can have NixOS instead of debian: https://github.com/nix-community/nixos-avf

interloxia• 7 months ago

I tried this a while back with. NET and Blazor. With split screen I was able to add some code and preview live in the browser and build and 'install' a simple pwa.

Presumably with an external monitor and the desktop mode it would be better.

Code from tiny llms such as Gemma are a waste of time but it "worked". It was neat to generate a working app completely offline.

The main problem was that the VM crashed on my pixel fairly frequently. Might be better by now.

phrotoma• 7 months ago

Got a direct link to the app? The play store search is just offering me the Tom Hanks movie about a dude stuck in an airport ...

Edit: found it using these instructions.

https://github.com/nix-community/nixos-avf?tab=readme-ov-fil...

syngrog663• 7 months ago

Claude not needed to "code from anywhere you are" and certainly not from your phone. no LLM needed. no agents. Tailscale or any other VPN not needed

use a laptop. (trying to do it with only a phone-factor UI is madness.) have a mobile-friendly ISP if desired or needed. solved. been solved for decades

so much of the AI BS hyping is about inventing supposedly unsolved problems. like Google showing me ads to convince me to use Gemini to write a README. no thanks, kids, have been able to do that for many decades using only my brain, eyes, fingers and vi/vim

scottbez14• 7 months ago

How do I use a laptop while standing on a train each day? It sounds like a laptop is sufficient for you, but I suspect (based on myself and other responses in this thread) that a laptop is not always viable for many people; this tutorial appears targeted toward those people.

I’ve actually considered a neck/shoulder support for a laptop in the past but decided against it because it’d be cumbersome and make me a theft target.

As for AI, personally speaking I use AI coding tools to allow me to continue enjoying some hobby side projects with less free time available with a kid. It’s been a massive boost to my happiness in a generally low stakes area. I’m curious to see if I can get a similar unlock on my short and interrupted commute times as well, which is why I (personally) find this article interesting.

syngrog663• 7 months ago

dont try to code while standing on a train. one of many antpatterns a wise engineer should learn to avoid, as part of polishing our craft. also: dont juggle chainsaws, etc ;-)

rbergamini2721• 7 months ago

You can't bring a laptop to the club! Truthfully I haven't tried so I will keep you posted.

alentodorov2• 7 months ago

revived an ipad mini 2 (2013), rooted it and ssh-ed in and let claude handle the tailscale setup, terminal emulator selection, and prep work. perfect form factor and can test web apps via browser.

duskdozer5• 7 months ago

so much of the AI BS hyping is about inventing supposedly unsolved problems. like Google showing me ads to convince me to use Gemini to write a README.

Okay, but how are you going to write your AGENTS.md file??

mritchie712• 7 months ago

to keep your mac awake:

    caffeinate -di

rbergamini2721• 7 months ago

Thank you! Did not know about this command before - good to know

tomjuggler2• 7 months ago

Pretty cool idea, I'm going to be trying this only using open source Cecli (with DeepSeek API) instead of Claude CLI because I don't have infinite $$$

rbergamini2721• 7 months ago

Thanks! And great idea! I'm still new to hacking - definitely need to check out more of the open source tools out there

tomjuggler2• 7 months ago

https://github.com/dwash96/cecli

It's a fork of Aider but with agent mode, MCP, skills, task manager and more. Very active development team!

functionmouse• 7 months ago

What You'll Need
A Computer running 24/7 with Internet Connection
A Smartphone
A Claude Pro subscription

Or.. just install Termux and do it the same way you do it anywhere else?

b40d-48b2-979e• 7 months ago

Termux with a 10-keyless BT keyboard in bed was a comfy way to solve AOC problems considering it released at midnight in my timezone.

rbergamini2721• 7 months ago

This comment taught me about Termux. Good to know!

katsura• 7 months ago

And what's the recommendation for iOS? Because, as it turns out, the Termux app on the App Store is not the same as the one on the Play Store, just uses the same name.

hhh2• 7 months ago

use blink https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/blink-shell-build-code/id15948...

zingar• 7 months ago

Hang on, is Claude running on your phone/tablet and installing large dev dependencies right there? Or which parts of this stack are you replacing with termux?

kurtis_reed• 7 months ago

Yeah, everything runs on the phone

ludocode• 7 months ago

I just use ConnectBot to ssh to my house. It runs tmux and vim well, especially with a little pocket-size folding bluetooth keyboard to go with it.

sjrd• 7 months ago

I genuinely did that a few times. Using an ssh client to fix a commit failing CI, for example. Even launching release builds remotely. Notably once when I was on vacation and half the Scala ecosystem was waiting for me.

cons0le2• 7 months ago

We need to take this idea further. Instead of "remote first", I'm waiting for the first company that will bodly declare "you can do all your work on your phone".

I'm tired of lugging my laptop around. Let me work from the beach with my phone and ar glasses.

rbergamini2721• 7 months ago

Please hire me when you make this happen! The tinkering started because I wanted to go outside to code but sitting with your laptop in the park is too strange.

cons0le2• 7 months ago

I've used this for a decade and still use it. Easy compatibility with tmux, can ssh, use llm, etc.

https://github.com/fandreuz/TUI-ConsoleLauncher

vaylian• 7 months ago

sitting with your laptop in the park is too strange.

Why should that be strange?

adhamsalama2• 7 months ago

Just install Termux and you're good to go.

urbandw311er• 7 months ago

I already doom code! I’ve always found coding a highly addictive activity and struggle to stop when I should. So for me it’s a hard no thanks :-)

rbergamini2721• 7 months ago

This is very relatable - hence keeping "doom" in the moniker. Stay strong my friend

analogpixel• 7 months ago

So this is the 4th+ article I've seen on using a VPN to vibe code on your phone. Would an email interface to Claude code work better?

- Email Claude to start the coding

- Claude emails you with any thing it needs acked on.

- you reply back to emails telling it what to do.

- maybe Claude can run your program and send back screen shots.

seems easier then getting a vpn working. What is the downside to using email?

educasean• 7 months ago

I see no downsides. Seems like an actually useful udea.

9dev3• 7 months ago

that would be perfect.

scottbez14• 7 months ago

I’d love this, if only for improved diff reviews possible compared to a terminal window! Would also work better for intermittent connectivity.

darknavi• 7 months ago

What is the downside to using email?

Make sure you authenticate somehow to prevent external abuse.

Natfan• 7 months ago

then run the mail servers locally?

ralfhn• 7 months ago

or text messages? Could be more convenient to reply to a text

gempir3• 7 months ago

Why not use a browser?

OpenCode has a webUI, you can simply host that on your machine at home and VPN to it.

https://opencode.ai/docs/server/ (sadly no screenshots, but its a pretty good GUI, looks like their desktop app)

pmarreck6• 7 months ago

You need tmux to be able to resume the same session from anywhere, mosh-server to make ssh resilient to sketchy mobile connections, and blink shell https://blink.sh/ to have a high quality iOS shell with a mosh and ssh client built right in to resume at any time.

Far more resilient and performant than a web client.

tailspin2019• 7 months ago

From that page:

The opencode serve command runs a headless HTTP server that exposes an OpenAPI endpoint…

Unless I missed it, there’s no mention of a web UI?

LTL_FTC2• 7 months ago

I have read of people doing remote coding with clause but through having Claude create pull request. The user then looks through the requests, and either approves or sends it back with edits. Seems like a good way to interact with Claude code, especially once one sets up a test suite and those proposed pull requests have proven not to regress.

radlad• 7 months ago

This pretty much sounds like my dream vibe coding dashboard - basically a personal Github populated by AI agents I can assign tasks to. Does this exist yet? Or can something like gitea be setup to behave this way?

magospietato4• 7 months ago

This is how I do mobile device coding. Android terminal w. git and gh installed and authenticated. Claude manages the feature branching and PR process; I review the PR in the GitHub mobile app.

durch4• 7 months ago

Same approach here. PR is the human review point, tests + CodeRabbit catch most issues -> https://github.com/cloud-atlas-ai/miranda.

The gap I wanted to fill: when Claude is genuinely uncertain ("JWT or sessions?" "Breaking change or not?"), it either guesses wrong or punts to the PR description where you can't easily respond.

Built a Telegram bot that intercepts Claude's AskUserQuestion calls via a hook, sends me an inline keyboard, injects my answer back into the session. Claude keeps working, PR still happens—but I can unblock it from my phone in 5 seconds instead of rejecting a PR based on a wrong guess.

Works in tandem with a bunch of other LLM enhancers I've built, they're linked in the README or that repo

calvinmorrison• 7 months ago

How about leveraging the git email workflow? hey - Claudio submitted a patchset

8note2• 7 months ago

ive tried slack before, but a challenge is how well you can get results returned back in a way where you can actually see what it did and give proper next steps

getting a PR back and being able to put comments on it is fine, but ive had middling success getting qcli at least to actually match the comments with the code that was commented on. i get the sense that there isnt any training with the comments inlined well on a diff:/

it doesnt have to be a vpn though, i was on an oauth webbrowser terminal, and things like coder[0] let you run vscode on the browser, including on your phone browser. there's also happy coder[1] which i tried using to connect between the new builtin android linux vm, and skip all the remote stuff entirely, but the phone would inevitably kill the terminal runbing claude, killing the whole thing. you can currently just run claude from your phone in that, which only has the problem that when the vm crashes, all you can do is wipe the partition.

[0] https://coder.com/ [1] https://happy.engineering/

ZenoArrow• 7 months ago

It's amazing to me this is called coding at all. Who knew all project managers and business analysts coming up with business requirements were actually just coding gods sent from the future.

j452• 7 months ago

Email is funny - maybe as a backup. Prompting is chatting.

herewulf4• 7 months ago

Okay, IRC then!

yieldcrv• 7 months ago

Inspiring me to do this in Telegram

“Why not Telegram”

all the crypto bros are already there, and maybe some e-commerce

pmarreck6• 7 months ago

seems easier then getting a vpn working

it could not possibly be easier to get Tailscale up and running on your mac or linux machine, install tmux and mosh on your mac or linux machine, connect to it with Blink Shell https://blink.sh/ on your iOS device that you've also installed tailscale to, and start vibe-coding from anywhere, on a performant, resilient, instantly resumable terminal connection.

seriously, it's a game-changer

mulmen• 7 months ago

But I already have email.

jscheel• 7 months ago

I’ve been doing some of this through a term on my phone, but it honestly sucks. Other interfaces (telegram, web ui, email) are gonna be much better experiences on your phone.

aghilmort• 7 months ago

interesting. email. Simple multiple sessions support to reply vs tabbing here there get threaded. clever

with vpn vps if want to interact? how would that work?

runjake3• 7 months ago

Would an email interface to Claude code work better?

No.

What is the downside to using email?

Email is clunky and feedback is not immediate.

seems easier then getting a vpn working.

Tailscale is easy for a dev to get going and very reliable. The author uses the Termius SSH app with Mosh, so it keeps the same SSH session going across device sleeps and disconnects. Tmux is helpful, too.

I do exactly what the author is doing, except I use a $5 Linode VPS, instead of a Mac at home.

He doesn't seem to be credited on this page, but I believe Pieter Levels (@levelsio) actually popularized this scheme. The author documents a nearly identical scheme.

godelski9• 7 months ago

While I don't use the AI part I have a very similar scheme and it is one of the reasons I encourage people to live in the terminal.

The idea is to create a modern "terminal"[0]

My main computer is a Macbook Air, which I carry around with me. It's purpose is for: internet, using Microsoft products when I'm forced to, Zoom/meetings, and SSH (or Mosh).

Most of my work is not done on this Macbook, instead I use it mostly as a terminal. I have a desktop that's sitting behind my TV so that it can be my TV and gaming system (yeah I know Monitor > TV. I'm a filthy casual and I don't care). I have a mouse connected to that computer and instead of using a keyboard I use ydotool (Wayland xdotool) with a shortcut on my iPhone or a script on my android phone or from my Macbook. I don't have to get up from the couch and I don't need a clunky wireless keyboard to clutter my livingroom.

Additionally I have a few pis and an old android phone with Tailscale installed on them. That's come in handy before as a machine's been disconnected and so I couldn't ssh from outside. Also makes it really easy to do a jump if you want to keep a machine off Tailscale or you don't have full control (like my 3D printer).

This setup is very natural feeling if you live in the terminal. I actually started doing this when I started doing HPC work. In a setting like that you're never sitting in front of the computer you're doing most of your work on so it kinda clicked "why was I restricting myself outside work?" Plus there's the side benefits of I always have access to my media, tools, and other stuff. You can do exactly the same thing with a phone but I like having a keyboard and the air is very lightweight and has a long battery life. Any netbook would have done the job tbh.

[0] There's a reason they're called "terminal emulators" rather than just "terminals".

deanputney• 7 months ago

It wouldn't shock me if multiple people came up with this idea independently. I've certainly experimented with it over the last couple years.

stavros2• 7 months ago

I'm fairly sure that levelsio didn't popularize SSHing into a computer from your phone to run a program. We were all doing it before LLMs.

johnnyanmac2• 7 months ago

Email is clunky and feedback is not immediate.

You're vibe coding on a smartphone into an external computer. You already abandoned "Immediate feedback" and "cohesion".

postalcoder• 7 months ago

Tmux is helpful, too.

Yes. tmux is essential. It's great to be able to monitor a session from desktop, or to pick up an existing conversation i'm having on the computer on my phone. In my shell, I have gemini flash wrapper that I use to manage my sessions so I can quickly connect to an existing one, or create a new one with natural language.

He doesn't seem to be credited on this page, but I believe Pieter Levels (@levelsio) actually popularized this scheme. The author documents a nearly identical scheme.

I've been doing this (tailscale + termius + tmux + ssh) for at least a year and a half. First with Aider in this exact setup, and now with Claude Code and Codex.

runjake3• 7 months ago

I can no longer edit this comment but it wasn’t meant to criticize the author. This is a great post. They are sharing their experiences and more importantly, teaching others.

Sorry if anyone, especially the author, took it this way.

dpoloncsak• 7 months ago

So what about setting up a discord server for you and your LLM? Gets the notification benefit of E-mail but retains the immediate-resposne, no? That's how all my UptimeKuma notifs are setup atleast...

khy• 7 months ago

I've been using Claude Code in their iOS app (on a Pro account). I just point it at my GitHub repo, and tell it to work on one of the issues I created. It required very little setup beyond what I did for Claude Code CLI.

serf• 7 months ago

i've seen that work well on existing codebases, but bootstrapping a codebase that way is like pulling teeth in my past experiences.

so it really sort of falls back to what you're doing with the llm. code maintenance isn't novel development, which isn't polishing.

Flere-Imsaho2• 7 months ago

Email might work, however if you're a Telegram user you could write a bot that runs on your home system that runs the cli commands on your behalf and then sends the output as a response to you. No need to open up any ports on your router.

gonzaloalvarez• 7 months ago

I didn’t know until I read this comment, but this is exactly what I want. A telegram bot with Claude on the other side and GitHub app to check out the code

electroglyph• 7 months ago

Cloudflare worker would work, too

dogline• 7 months ago

I have custom scripts I use at home to keep track of various personal data, assisted by an LLM. The idea of using Telegram as a way to have a global, quick, and personal interface from my phone or tablet, is perfect and easy to set up.

Claude is making it easier to have bespoke data and dashboards for anything. We're going to make a lot of them, for all reasons. I've also made apps with Django interfaces, but quick, global interfaces are going to become in demand.

durch4• 7 months ago

I've replied with this in another comment, but this seems more pertinent ;)

Thats exactly the approach I took with https://github.com/cloud-atlas-ai/miranda, Telegram bot, PR is the human review point, tests + CodeRabbit catch most issues.

Bot intercepts Claude's AskUserQuestion calls via a hook, sends me an inline keyboard, injects my answer back into the session. Claude keeps working, PR still happens—but I can unblock it from my phone in 5 seconds instead of rejecting a PR based on a wrong guess.

jes5199• 7 months ago

I've been using Telegram bot to talk to a Claude SDK agent who talks to my Claudes via tmux commands (all running on a DigitalOcean VPS)

gingersnap• 7 months ago

Can you do it with signal?

slashdave• 7 months ago

E-mail is not secure (sent in plain text)

bigfishrunning2• 7 months ago

Unless you set up pgp in your email client...

johnnyanmac2• 7 months ago

You're vibe coding. Clearly what you're working on isn't of enough value to secure anyway.

aqme28• 7 months ago

I code from my phone via GitHub and the Claude actions plugin.

plagiarist• 7 months ago

I'd rather have an DM interface and each task has its own little icon or face. You still have to set up one of the text servers and also do VPN but if you're already vibe coding that stuff why not make it more pleasant than TUI on your phone?

irjustin• 7 months ago

What is the downside to using email?

If true to the post, it lacks "real time". Doom scrolling by nature is while chat is async. Refreshing Gmail constantly is not fun.

latentsea• 7 months ago

You don't need a VPN to vibe code on your phone. I've been happily doing thumb-driven development for the last 4 months now using GitHub Copilot on github.com from my phone. It even has real-time chat with copilot as it works. Having your PRs deploy to an environment allows you to check it. I also have playwright tests that record screenshots and traces that get uploaded as artifacts I can check too.

someguyiguess2• 7 months ago

If setting up a VPN is that difficult for you you may have bigger problems my friend. (I joke). But really I am surprised that a VPN is the part you take issue with.

kkarpkkarp• 7 months ago

So this is the 4th+ article I've seen on using a VPN to vibe code on your phone.

and all of them mentions Tailscale. I would not be surprised if we hear in a few days it got next big fund and all of this is just a preparation for it

maccard• 7 months ago

Tailscale has been a HM darling for a long time, this isn’t very surprising!

Tepix• 7 months ago

Right. For a simple setup I think using plain boring Wireguard is the better option. Boring is good.

djmips3• 7 months ago

I did this on my own without reading any of these articles - I already had a terminal program on my Android phone and was already using Tailscale for shared projects in Ghidra so... Maybe it's just a path of least resistance.

rmoriz• 7 months ago

a fully open source alternative would be netbird, it's based on wireguard as well, has 0 closed components but lacks some features (like IPv6 or internal CA). https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird

bartread• 7 months ago

Would an email interface to Claude code work better?

This might be the most "when your only tool is a hammer all your problems look like nails" suggestion I've ever read.

Email driven automation isn't a terrible solution to everything - it works very well for support tickets, for example - but it's really lacking in the immediacy required from a serious software development environment.

I'll go further: I think coding on my phone is a fun, neat, idea, and an interesting curiosity, but I don't actually want to do it. There are few situations where I'd feel comfortable getting my phone out to code where I don't also have my laptop with me, and that's going to provide a way better software development experience, so I'm always going to use that for anything serious.

Garlef• 7 months ago

My thoughts went into a different direction: "Maybe I should buy a small tablet so that I can read code properly without carrying a full laptop?"

(Sure, there might be small laptops of similar dimensions ... But as the name "laptop" suggests these are made for a different UX... and they require more effort to turn on/off)

larodi• 7 months ago

Claude Code does a very decent UI, somehow the text mode is much more attractive. As if there is once in a lifetime opportunity to make the console great again.

PurpleRamen• 7 months ago

So basically back to the chat-interface. You could also replace e-mail with WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Mattermost or whichever you prefer, it would be all the same.

gitaarik• 7 months ago

No syntax highlighting, I do like to review snippets of code. Also the interactive questions / answers during planning would be a pain over email. And what about text wrapping? Headache.

Edit: also setting up an email interface API to Claude Code seems like a lot more work than just setting up a VPN.

josefresco• 7 months ago

Claude Code recommended a Telegram bot over email for this very workflow. I've configured my basement RPi to use my "spare tokens" during off hours. At 5PM it messages me to ask if I want the agent to work this evening. If there's no task in the queue I can add one then using the bot. There's also a set of commands to check on status etc. I'm working on the next step to make it a more automated and if there's no specific task, it will create it's own.

strobe• 7 months ago

it looks like some kind marketing push or 'growth hack', just to get some viral thing around which justify why do you extra reason to pay for Claude or Tailscale subscription.

I personally not even convinced that Claude Code any better on average than something like Aider+Gemini 3 or other good model. May be in some specific cases it actually better but in those Aider+'Antropic Model via API' most likely will work too.

sabareesh• 7 months ago

I am looking for some open source terminal for iphone .I have code server running which i can just use terminal from vs code on safari

hambes• 7 months ago

Why would I need claude code for remote programming, if I could just use ssh and tmux?

skybrian• 7 months ago

I'm using exe.dev for something like this. Well, from a laptop, but others have done it from their phone.

I'd link to a blog post about my setup, but I'm still writing it. Here's someone else's blog post:

https://commaok.xyz/ai/just-in-time-software/

LTL_FTC2• 7 months ago

"Even code at the club!" haha if you're coding at the club, just go home! but also, I really wish Sony still made their micro Vaio laptops (Sony Vaio P, for instance).

rbergamini2721• 7 months ago

That phone was taken 5 minutes before departure lol - a micro laptop sounds sweet!

jimt1234• 7 months ago

"Even code at the club!" ... Great idea for my next rap song! LOL

zahlman4• 7 months ago

Historically I had thought there was a pendulum swing between using local computing resources vs. having a dumb terminal to access something remotely.

But now instead of swinging back to local resources, apparently we're proposing to add a second layer of remote access (phone -> computer -> Claude servers).

bonesss• 7 months ago

Hey, come on, it could be better: you could have hundreds of employees venting directly to chat logs held by Microsoft detailing all your internal politics, planning, customer acquisition strategies, code, integrations desires, excel sheets, emails, and projects.

Nothing could possibly go wrong, those guys are always 100% trustworthy and reliable, contracts and NDAs with them are ironclad and easily enforceable… … o_o

godelski9• 7 months ago

In the last 5 years I pretty much fully migrated to my laptop being a terminal for other machines. I more use it like a local machine in HPC: web browsing, word processing, scripting. Anything serious is done remotely. But I also live in the terminal and so realistically what's the difference? 99% of the time the result is that I get to use a "big" computer without having to carry it around.

FWIW, I'm not a big fan of AI coding. I use AI (including LLMs) and I am an AI researcher, but the vibe coding just hasn't clicked despite constant efforts. I guess it can make more sense to do it if you're programming from your phone because while normally typing isn't the bottleneck it definitely is on the phone (or at least far less comfortable)

zahlman4• 7 months ago

My desktop is 11 years old, but I still feel like it does so much that I wouldn't want any cloud services except for AI. (And there's no way this thing would handle a useful local model, but I'm also really not very enthused about the kind of data sharing involved in remote AI use.)

wolfgang000• 7 months ago

Same setup as mine, I have an OpenVPN server running in my router, and my main PC has wake-on-lan and a KVM as a backup to turn it on and off.

I have an old used Dell Latitude that I use as a pseudo thin client. I ssh into my PC, and everything just works.

I really like this setup because I only have one environment, so everything is there, and I don't have to install anything in the laptop

phendrenad2• 7 months ago

Maybe in the future we'll all have a "hub" in our homes that contains our data, but we'll shell out to the local datacenter for AI compute, while our actual interface will be a VR headset or tablet located with us, anywhere in the world.

parliament32• 7 months ago

A Claude Pro subscription

"Doom Slopping" might be more fitting.

rbergamini2721• 7 months ago

Exactly

foobarqux• 7 months ago

Number 1 on the front page of Hacker News for explaining how to connect to a remote machine via ssh.

krupan• 7 months ago

I too am dumfounded by this. Is it an off day? Have all the people that actually know how to do things with computers gone somewhere else? What is going on here?

dinkumthinkum2• 7 months ago

It's all AI hype bro sycophants for the most part now. Oh, well.

duskdozer5• 7 months ago

Yeah I feel like I'm missing something here. I'm not sure if people being so dependent on these LLMs generating code is that widespread at this point or if this is some kind of publicity stunt.

pmarreck6• 7 months ago

this is literally my setup and it is a game-changer:

tailscale, tmux, codex/claude code, mosh, blink shell (iOS) https://blink.sh/

firasan• 7 months ago

Curious if you are directly running mosh on macOS. Last I checked, it was broken on macOS Tahoe, so I have been relying on tmux for surviving flaky ssh connections.

pmarreck6• 7 months ago

i use both tmux and mosh-server

i install them via nix-darwin (I've abandoned homebrew)

i am on Tahoe latest beta

blauditore• 7 months ago

So, we've spent ages, blood, and tears building better UIs than text, and now with AI everyone is suddenly expected to type instructions on the phone? Yes, I realize this is hard to avoid for coding in particular, but generally I'm tired of typing text on my phone. And no, I don't want to talk to it either.

handfuloflight2• 7 months ago

How much information can you encode in your squint?

twism• 7 months ago

I use a bespoke hacker software keyboard (ctrl/meta/custom keys for GNU screen and emacs) and also bespoke SSH client (fork of the original irssiconnectbot) for years.

My phone is the original Pixel Fold. You would think I use it unfolded but the passport form factor lends itself to be almost as productive folded that I use it that way most of the time. Unfolded it's just a bit better experience (bigger keys / more display real estate/ more characters per line/ etc).

With that said I'm looking forward to the Click Communicator: https://clicks.tech/communicator

I've also been meaning to write about my setup and open sourcing my tools.

Oh. Writing clojure helps due to the terseness of the language. Not sure it would be a pleasant experience writing something like Java with the 80 character line limit I try to impose on myself

crawshaw• 7 months ago

I am a huge fan of driving agents from my phone, though this is one of the places where I don’t think terminal UIs work. Agents need a web UI for phones.

sp9k• 7 months ago

Early on in my programming life, I had very limited access to a computer. I did much of my coding in my head while walking around. In some cases, I'd literally write code in my head and dump it out when I had computer access, but abstract and creative problem solving were especially natural in a detached setting. I truly believe this time was more valuable than the time at the keyboard.

If anything, I want to do more of that: get away from the device to let my mind wander. "Doom" coding sounds apt.

japoneris• 7 months ago

phplovesong2• 7 months ago

Vibe coding is such a bad word. It should be called prompting. Thats all it really is. Its like calling a point and click UI programming

setopt2• 7 months ago

I feel it depends whether you inspect and edit the code as part of the workflow, or just test what the AI produced and give feedback without participating in the coding yourself.

phplovesong2• 7 months ago

Most of the slop i witness is the latter. This is evident in huge multi 10K pull requests. The code is just an artifact, while the prompting is the "new" coding.

adhamsalama2• 7 months ago

I run Claude Code on my phone itself via Termux.

hayksaakian• 7 months ago

claude.ai + vercel and you can do it all without anything but your phone

their web interface lets you use Claude code and push changes to a GitHub repository

vercel can auto build from a GitHub repo

even less setup and infrastructure needed

dminor• 7 months ago

If you have GitHub copilot you can create github issues and assign them to copilot. All you need is a browser.

Sjeiti• 7 months ago

İ've been using Termux (and Vim) to code on my phone for years, way easier than this setup.

henearkr• 7 months ago

I was coding a lot many years ago with a Nokia N900.

The loss of the physical keyboard ruined everything for me. I really need the sense of touch.

tdeck• 7 months ago

Similarly I used to write Python on my Motorola Droid with the slide-out keyboard. But my touchscreen typing style these days relies heavily on auto-correct and trying to enter code is a real exercise in frustration.

spacecadet• 7 months ago

I built my AI dungeon master game and play it using my phone, Tailscale, and an app called Termius.

https://github.com/derekburgess/dungen

croes• 7 months ago

If you don’t write a single line of code that’s not coding.

Otherwise my customers are coders to. they to the same. The difference is the recipient of the order

japhib• 7 months ago

Btw this is basically Replit's entire product (replit.com). Costs some money but the UX is pretty good

hmokiguess• 7 months ago

I really want to use and like this, but I feel like I need a different UX / UI for my phone. I think adoption of this development workflow at large is going to be a design challenge more than a setup/devops one.

alansaber• 7 months ago

I agree- I think there is a good opportunity for a more slow-paced, thoughtful UX on mobile.

opan• 7 months ago

I was expecting this to be about using Termux or similar. Why are LLMs involved here?

magospietato4• 7 months ago

I'm using the Android terminal and Claude Code to vibecode on the go. Or rather, as a fairly boring father of two, when I'm tied up in the necessary chores of family life - cooking and cleaning. Nothing as complicated as this - just Claude Code and a fairly standard Linux dev term, but it's remarkable.

Over the recent break, across four or five sessions, I wrote a set of prompts around ~500 words in total.

The result was Claude scanning my network for active ports using nmap, fuzzing those ports with cURL, documenting its findings, self-directing web searches for API/SDK docs for my Hue bridge and ancient Samsung TV, then building a set of scripts to control my lighting system and a fully functional HTML+JS remote for my TV.

The most entertaining part was Claude prompting _me_ to pop into the living room and press the button on the Hue bridge so it could fetch an API key.

The most valuable part? The understanding I gained secondary to generative act. I now understand the button on a Hue bridge literally just tells the device to issue a new API key at the next request. I understand how Entertainment mode works, and why. I understand how Samsung SmartThings is mediated via websockets - and just how insecure decade old Samsung TVs are.

Around 500 words to gain all this? I hate to buy into the hype, but it feels inflectional.

safety1st• 7 months ago

I read the Readme. So this is all just stuff you can do with Claude's cli interface? It edits files and runs utilities? And it does this with few enough errors that you can be productive by just chatting with it over ssh? Is Claude the only one that can do this?

embedding-shape• 7 months ago

Probably Claude Code and Codex are the currently best ones, Claude Code a bit faster, Codex a lot more precise and "engineering" focused.

As long as you figure out how to verify that the built thing actually does what it's supposed to, ideally with automated tests, it's almost fire-and-forget if you're good at explaining what you want and need.

magospietato4• 7 months ago

Possibly Codex, but I've only used Claude Code so far.

Worth pointing out I'm not SSHing to a different device. Claude Code installed and running directly in Android terminal on my phone.

I've built ASP.NET Core APIs on-device this way. Install dotnet in the terminal and Claude can write code, build, run unit tests, and even run the API on localhost. Then use `git` and `gh` to commit, push and raise a PR.

wickedsight3• 7 months ago

How did you make sure Claude wasn't doing anything unintended while allowing it to run scripts it wrote on your network?

gregoriol2• 7 months ago

Run it inside a VM, make snapshots of the VM if needed (or use vagrant/ansible to rebuild), commit regularly, ...

magospietato4• 7 months ago

I still manually approve tool use requests at the start of a run. As it gets deeper in I might allow it to run safer commands without that oversight (e.g. writing to local text files), but potentially destructive execution still requires approval.

As for the local env, I'm treating the Android terminal as a sandbox. Anything gets trashed I just reset and reinstall my toolchain.

I won't pretend I'd use this workflow for anything high-stakes. But for simple things like "I wonder how my Hue lights actually work?", its viable.

not_ai3• 7 months ago

This can be done not just with Claude but also with codex and gemeni cli. Well technically anything that has a cli interface.

I run both gemeni (fee) and codex (paid), with tmux thrown in to switch between phone and laptop. Laptop runs vscode with ssh to my server but I could also use the web version of vscode.

koinedad• 7 months ago

I’ve thought about this many times, maybe with a custom telegram bot!

qazplm17• 7 months ago

I have similar setup, one thing to add is map action button to a shortcut for dictate to clipboard since you can’t dictate directly into termius.

pqdbr• 7 months ago

Could you please share more? I can't make dictation work.

kator• 7 months ago

I use Terminus with Zellij and keep about 8 sessions going with a combination of Claude and Codex, and once in a while, Gemini. It's great when you're sitting in a docotor's office lobby bored out of your skull and when you get back to your desk you just join the session and it's all right there.

mands• 7 months ago

I've seen this concept a few times recently and am interested.

However, what's the benefit over just using the "Claude Code for Web" feature built into the Claude Code mobile app?

It clones your repo into a VM which has a bunch of dev tools installed, you can install additional packages, set env vars, and then prompt it remotely. The sessions can be continued from the web and desktop apps, and it can even be "teleported" into the terminal app when back at a laptop/desktop.

Would be great to understand what the differences / advantages of OP approach are.

not_ai3• 7 months ago

I’ve only used web codex version but everything about it was slower than what’s described here, broken flows, more rate limited and impossible to “human in the loop” before a PR.

elemdos3• 7 months ago

I feel like there’s something special about connecting to a server to build and deploying on the same server. Claude Code on the web lets you connect to a repo, test the code, and deploy it, but then you have to host the app and data somewhere else to take it live. IMO the ideal is doing everything in one place and it seems like a lot of dev tools are going in that direction too (v0, val town, deno deploy).

ec1096853• 7 months ago

The Claude code tui is so nice. The web and iOS apps neuter it weirdly.

kovek3• 7 months ago

I recommend https://happy.engineering/ . It is very easy to set up. I can have an instance in a container which contains my repository and lots of packages/binaries necessary for the work. I can then use the different binaries to run commands in the container. I was able to easily do `ls -la` in the container and email that to myself, all done from my phone. You can also connect it to applescript and whatnot in order to send sms messages, or you can connect to whatsapp. I was able to make it extract the top 5 headlines on hacker news, get the top ideas being discussed in the comments for each submission, and send all of that into my Apple Reminders for me to read on my phone.

No VPN needed.

kovek3• 7 months ago

I'm looking at Opencode and it might be better because it allows you to abort a task. VPN needed.

999900000999• 7 months ago

My flow is GitHub issues+ GitHub Copilot+ Web Deployments from GitHub actions.

I can just ask GitHub to fix something from the mobile app, and then set it to build on PR merge. It works most of the time, but you'd have to be absolutely wacky to do it in production or with any code you actually care about

knowsuchagency• 7 months ago

I love this! This concept on steroids is one of the main reasons I made https://github.com/knowsuchagency/vibora after trying both happy.engineering and Vibe Kanban for remote coding. There's the claude mobile app, too, but I want to run Claude on my own hardware in a terminal

LeicaLatte• 7 months ago

My setup is very similar.

After you log in you can unlock keychain by running this command

‘security unlock-keychain’

shepherdjerred• 7 months ago

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.

elemdos3• 7 months ago

Being able to “code” from your phone really feels like a huge change; it never took before because coding from your phone was miserable, but if you’re just coding by having a conversation then it might even be better to do it from your phone. I don’t know what that leads to, but it’s let me fix bugs from bed and build an MVP while moving, so I can’t complain.

For anyone looking for a more integrated and smaller approach, I built an open source app builder + runtime: https://github.com/tinykit-studio/tinykit

Basically gives you a Lovable-like app builder with built-in services (database/files/auth/email/payments/etc), content and design fields, and a code editor. Code is a single Svelte 5 file, and you can build/host unlimited apps on one server. And the server is just node + PocketBase, so runs easy on a $2 VPS. And LLM is BYOKey.

insane_dreamer• 7 months ago

Typing on the phone is terrible. Could work with good speech to text though

sschueller• 7 months ago

Back 15-20 years ago we had many phones with keyboards. They had a purpose but Apple's profits made everyone envious and they started to copy what the leader was doing even thought for some users a keyboard make much more sense.

What make sense for all users would be a swap-able battery. Water-tightness is no longer and excuse with new phones likes foldables that aren't. Fun fact, Apple dumped the swap-able battery before the iPhone was waterproof.

4k93n23• 7 months ago

i switched to using neovim a year ago and oddly enough its actually a lot easier to write code in termux compared to any of the other android IDE type apps. they all have drop down menus or sidebars that are quite awkward to use, especially when the keyboard is already taking up half the screen, but with neovim (or vim) youre using the keyboard to do most things anyway, so the keyboard can just stay open all of the time and you never need to move your hand up to the actual app part. selecting text is way easier than android's implementation as well

victorymakes• 7 months ago

This looks neat. How do you handle code verification in this workflow, especially if you want to be confident about what actually ran?

biinjo• 7 months ago

I don’t get it. How is this different from using the Claude iOS (and I assume Android) native app and use their “Code” option. It fires up a Claude Code session in the cloud and you can vibe code anything while on the toilet.

fassssst• 7 months ago

DIY culture I guess, but yea both Claude and Codex have native phone apps that run the agent on a cloud VM and can push PRs.

ec1096853• 7 months ago

Claude iOS is way worse. You don’t get the full tui.

darepublic• 7 months ago

I might just be old fashioned but in a party with a couple of drinks in me I don't trust my ability to even vibe code well.

handfuloflight2• 7 months ago

Just keep your eyes on the pretty CI/CD lights.

zhoujianfu• 7 months ago

I made something very similar for myself and now have decided to open it up to others if you want to help me beta test.. free for all and it sets you up with your own hetzner vps and you even share my claude code max account: clodhost.com

borisandcrispin• 7 months ago

I just use Happy https://happy.engineering/

garyfirestorm• 7 months ago

Guys hear me out. If you ssh into your raspberry pi or any PC you could open console and run nano text.md file. Then you can manage your todo list from any device remotely. Stop doom scrolling and start disrupting todo subscription services. /s

erelong• 7 months ago

ollama runs locally in termux preferably on proot-distro (with less "coding power")

zuhayeer• 7 months ago

This is awesome! But I don't think you need to say never to all those display settings. You just need to go to Battery -> Options, and "Prevent automatic sleeping on power adapter when the display is off", and wake for network access when on power adapter.

saadn92• 7 months ago

Yeah I just built www.makerkit.io for the exact same thing

zamadatix2• 7 months ago

Tailscale is a lot of permanent runtime overhead/latency just to avoid setting up dynamic DNS and changing a few lines in the sshd_config.

duskdozer5• 7 months ago

Do you have recommended reading? I haven't been confident enough that I wouldn't overlook serious security issues opening SSH on my own machines.

vivzkestrel• 7 months ago

"2. Make sure your computer is ON and UNLOCKED When disconnecting/reconnecting power, make sure you unlock the computer. I've ran into this issue one too many times."

- this is the biggest problem that needs to be solved

- i dont want to keep my computer running 24x7 wasting power for stuff like this

- why not make a robotic arm that you keep at the computer table which can use open cv to plug the computer on when required?

billyjobob• 7 months ago

Lookup "wake-on-lan".

duskdozer5• 7 months ago

I'm not sure why I'm having so much difficulty with it, but I've never been able to get this to work on my machines despite my searching.

ec1096853• 7 months ago

I use Prompt, Ever Terminal, Whisper, EC2 and Claude Code.

I can build anything with it. Having Claude on top of a terraform repo lets me fully control my infra. Claude is so good at AWS and terraform, and it even found a $3k monthly accidental spend I had running (also sent a refund request to hopefully get some credit back).

Also have a Claude driven CI workflow in GitHub to help keep everything on track.

Having full access to the Claude Code TUI is so much better than the web or iOS interface, plus everything runs on your own setup.

And agree it has replaced doom scrolling / useless new reading.

october8140• 7 months ago

I like to "doom read" books.

someguyiguess2• 7 months ago

I’m wary of enabling ssh/remote login. It seems like it could be an attack vector.

treavorpasan• 7 months ago

Why do you ever want to code while you are running? I run to getaway from daily grind to smell the fresh air.

AIandAPIs• 7 months ago

doom coding

r2ob• 7 months ago

just don't

andsmi2• 7 months ago

Cursor--run in cloud seems to work just fine for this. I setup my project and then github to publish web or mobile app.... i believe claude can also take instructions from github...or am i missing something.

mintflow• 7 months ago

Tailscale is quite handy in remote agent coding, Sometimes I use tailscale and RustDesk on my phone to check Claude code, I also built an app called NovaAccess which bake tailscale into the app which does not confict of VPN I used.

Teknomadix• 7 months ago

This is cute.

My personal world changed when I discovered Nix On Droid and cloned my personal Claude Code flake which uses pnpm to keep a rolling bleeding edge version with revision controlled dots. I started using Nvim /avante and open router shortly after that, also via Nix on Droid. Game changer for those long subway rides.

abinmn2• 7 months ago

I've been using a similar workflow for the past couple of months.Heavily inspired by Simon Willison’s approach of building micro tools, I’ve started building micro-utilities. I do this mostly while I'm commuting or outside or waiting for something at work.

Instead of just jotting down an idea in a notes app (and it sitting there for eternity), I’ll open up Jules, describe the tool, and have it scaffold the HTML. I have Cloudflare Pages hooked up to the repo—once Jules submits the PR, the preview branch builds automatically and I can verify the result on my phone immediately.

simonmales• 7 months ago

Whats the cycle time here? This work flow makes sense to me.

abinmn2• 7 months ago

It’s largely asynchronous for me. I'll trigger the generation and come back to the PR whenever I'm free.

I'd say the cycle time largely depends on the complexity of the tools you are building. I've built a movie shelf hooking up with trakt.tv under 30 minutes and a mermaidJS diagram editor spanning multiple sessions and couple of days.

mattfrommars• 7 months ago

A random thought has started to occur, maybe given how early we are in LLM tech world, isn’t it strange a lot of AI tech is being built on top of proprietary tech? In this case, it’s Claude Code

And honestly, all this free marketing has me convinced to pay for it

baalimago• 7 months ago

There are many open source alternatives to claude code. Crush[0] is one, Clai[1] another, opencode[3] a third. These are all vendor agnostic, and use API credits from different providers.

[0] https://github.com/charmbracelet/crush [1]: https://github.com/baalimago/clai [2]: https://github.com/anomalyco/opencode

kaiwenwang• 7 months ago

Why not Claude Code on web/cloud linked to your GH repo?

kalmyk• 7 months ago

is termius free, I was wondering if there is a free open source ios terminal

rcarmo2• 7 months ago

I have been doing this with toad and opencode and it is great for those unprompted ideas that pop up while in the big blue room, but not really useful for large projects.

worldsayshi• 7 months ago

Yeah but I wonder if there's a structure that can be used to make it useful for larger side projects.

rcarmo2• 7 months ago

That’s where VS Code has helped me the most, it provides a lot more model guidance than people realize.

mikojan• 7 months ago

Why Tailscale instead of plain wireguard?

4k93n23• 7 months ago

probably because you just install it, then you log in and youre done. tailscale takes care of the rest. going through any more effort just so you can write some slop code is probably not worth it

purrcat2592• 7 months ago

If you don't want to run your machine 24/7 (whether for electrical consumption, environmental, noise, etc reasons), I wrote an ssh proxy [1] that will send WOL packets to a target machine and hold your connection until its alive.

I then configured debian-autoshutdown [2] to turn the machine off if there's no traffic on ssh after 15 minutes.

This way I just ssh into my machine (whether via antigravity on my laptop or termius on my phone) and within 30 or so seconds its awake, no physical button presses needed. I documented the whole flow in more detail on my blog [3].

I'm now working on an improvement called machine on proxy (or mop) that will allow me to start Proxmox VMs instead of physical machines, so I can let gemini-cli run wild and if it decides to wipe the entire hard drive I can restore from a snapshot.

[1] https://github.com/simonamdev/ssh-wol-proxy

[2] https://github.com/mnul/debian-autoshutdown

[3] https://www.simonam.dev/ssh-wol-proxy/

LeonM• 7 months ago

I do the same. I can SSH into my router at home (which is on 24/7), then issue a WOL request to my dev machine to turn it on.

You don't even have to fully shut down you dev machine, you can allow it to go into stand-by. For that it needs to be wired by cable to LAN, and configured to leave the NIC powered on on stand-by. You can then wake up the device remotely via a WOL magic packet. Maybe this is possible with WLAN too, but I have never tried.

Also, you don't need a Tailscale or other VPN account. You can just use SSH + tunneling, or enable a VPN on your router (and usually enjoy hardware acceleration too!). I happen to have a static IP at home, but you can use a dynamic DNS client on your router to achieve the same effect.

exographicskip• 7 months ago

I run a lot of small form factor (SFF) machines including NUCs, Minisforums, and a Mac Studio.

At idle, they aren't loud or consuming much electricity compared to sleep/shutdown.

Fruit co devices in particular are extremely efficient; the Studio is rated at 6W idle, 145W max consumption (cf. https://support.apple.com/en-us/102027 )

fittingopposite• 7 months ago

Can you do the same to remotely wake up my MacBook on demand via WoL and ssh into it from my phone? What are the security risks?

purrcat2592• 7 months ago

I don't think WOL works over Wi-Fi and whether you can get WOL from a USB ethernet adapter.

My proxy doesn't attempt to handle security. Most folks use either Tailscale or some other VPN solution. In my case I use the wireguard server in my router to VPN into home which gives me access to the proxy and consequently to the machine.

artpar• 7 months ago

I did show hn just yesterday you don't need tailscale or any 3rd party server. Just use webrtc and it's just your mobile and laptop. end 2 end encrypted. no 3rd party dependency.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46514587

voidUpdate2• 7 months ago

What does Claude add to this? I've done coding on my phone before by sshing into my home server and just... writing code. Is there a benefit to writing code through a third party instead?

kreddor• 7 months ago

I'm just as baffled. I went to the comments to better understand but I still don't get it.

I've coded on my phone on several occasions. If you use Android, you don't even need a server or a home computer since Termux works really well as it is. It can run node.js and a bunch of other development tools easily. Or you can just ssh into a server with a development environment and do your stuff their (AI or not).

voidUpdate2• 7 months ago

Yeah, I use Termux a decent amount, whether it's just updating my todo list on my home server or actually programming on it. I feel like this is just aimed at the people who want to code entire projects with LLMs, cost be damned

cdrini• 7 months ago

Programming on a phone is a tough sell for many since typing is slower and you have less screen real estate to view/debug the code. Using an AI agent and typing only prompts makes it more compelling. You input less, and only occasionally have to edit code instead of writing everything from 0. And even with editing, typing a prompt like "separate the X logic from class Y into a new file/class" is much faster on mobile than the equivalent actions.

pjmlp• 7 months ago

Just install proper development tools on the device, some examples from my setup,

- Pydroid

- C# Shell .NET IDE

- Pascal N-IDE

- Shader Editor

system2• 7 months ago

Can't we do the same with an SSH client such as Termius?

immibis• 7 months ago

Vibe coding is not coding (unless by vibe-coding you meant buttplug.io)

integricho• 7 months ago

Calling "telling the LLM what to do" coding is dishonest, and I have no respect for any of this.

tobi_bsf• 7 months ago

If you need this article to get the idea of using Claude Code from your phone, you won’t build anything substantial anyway.

TofuLover• 7 months ago

Why?

x187463• 7 months ago

Because, obviously, you should be spending all of your waking time thinking about LLMs, agents, and how you can integrate them into every part of your life. If you have been living properly in the age of impending-AGI, you would have already been desperately seeking more opportunities to interact with these systems. That desperation would have led you to independently discover agents and all the ways you could couple yourself to them even when away from your computer. Are you a parent stuck at home experiencing life with your kids instead of sitting at your desk? Why not escape such a hellscape by whipping out your phone and building a SaaS from your phone while your offspring annoys you with requests for attention and meaningless affection?

---

Really, this whole environment of 'coding from my phone with dozens of agents while I'm doing the laundry' feels like satire of the sorts of things we used to laugh at on Linkedin.

9dev3• 7 months ago

Great! Another shallow dismissal is just what everyone needs right now! I don’t understand this kind of gate keeping.

AI has been changing more rapidly than any other technology I have encountered in my life. It’s absolutely nobody’s fault for not keeping up with it or arriving late to the party, and telling them they should rather just stop because they won’t get it anyway is just awful behaviour.

punnerud• 7 months ago

Been using exactly this setup for a year now, works great. Have to be on the same WiFi to install from Xcode to iPhone. There is a “workaround” having it deploy to TestFlight, but it’s slow. Looking for a way to forward mDNS over VPN, to bad iPhone/Tailscale don’t support it. Only possibility I found is to have a separate mobile router that support forwarding mDNS.

jclardy• 7 months ago

Hmm, you could probably setup ad hoc builds and send them off to Firebase App Distribution or a similar service and get them a bit faster. Still pretty cumbersome but it skips the slow signing/slow uploads/slow processing that Test Flight provides for users.

pankajhbk007• 7 months ago

been using the same setup for the past 2-3 months now. My company gave the employees old mac pro (intel) for free to use for whatever purpose they want to. I was using AWS for most of my personal projects which I have now migrated to this mac. I use the app 'Amphetamine' to not let the mac sleep, and rest of the setups are the same with Tailscale + termius etc

Fun fact: once you get ssh access to mac, you can control almost anything running on it. Like I added my mac air under termius, and I could mute/unmute any videos playing on chrome using osascript from my iphone :)

wickedsight3• 7 months ago

Does anyone have any good advice or resources on a good workflow to do this with web apps? There's some stuff I'd really like to solve, for myself/family, that would require a front and back-end with persistent storage.

I would love to easily be able to set this up easily when a new idea pops into my mind and then have something running (locally or securely in some cloud) within a few hours/days. I wouldn't want to spend a ton of money for this though, nor have a lot of overhead to manage.

Edit: In addition, I'd like some safeguards where I can't have the LLM of choice accidentally delete stuff or do other unintended things on my network.

jimmySixDOF• 7 months ago

Replit is $25 a month but the best mobile allinone coding I have tried so far easy to push to host etc and you can kick off a stage then just pickup building where you left off anytime the termius/tmux/tailscale is fine but lot more effort even after you reach the command line. Horses for courses.

el_pa_b• 7 months ago

I'm using this setup as well, and I've been as far as writing a small Telegram bot to send input to Claude when it's stopped running via a Stop Hook

https://github.com/PABannier/claude-telegram-bot

igleria• 7 months ago

Great for parties where you rather be home tinkering.

I know this is probably in jest, but when someone invites you to a party it's not because they just want your atoms in the same room as them.

In regards to doom coding: I would chop off my arms before coding/prompting on a phone. Also, think about your cervical, neck etc! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

lrvick5• 7 months ago

I host weekly friend-of-friend open events where some people show up most weeks, find a nice comfortable spot to doom scroll in for a couple hours, maybe take a nap, leave, sit in their car for a bit, scroll some more, then go home.

I am just hoping they actually took a break from doom scrolling while driving as then at least I can say I had some non zero positive impact on their lives.

5 years phone-free and I do not miss it. People use them as security blankets to avoid having to be present for more than 5 minutes at a time with other people or even just exist in their own heads. I now find this behavior immature and gross but avoiding it would mean not having friends.

A smartphone is like toilet paper. No one wants to watch you use it.

GuB-42• 7 months ago

Maybe host your event in a cave if you can, no cell coverage, no Wi-Fi.

There is a bar like that where I go sometimes, it is in a cave, some people got Wi-Fi from the staff, and you have some reception if you stand near the front door, but it is mostly a network-free zone and it is great.

Another thing we did from time to time at the restaurant is to put all our phones stacked in the middle of the table, anyone who picks up his phone before the end of the meal for any reason pays the bill for everyone. So far, no one did.

rjh29• 7 months ago

Get better friends! Not everybody does this.

carlgreene• 7 months ago

Very curious to hear how you went phone-free and what your setup looks like

tracker1• 7 months ago

I'm with you... just with gesture input as it is, I hate using my phone for much beyond a quick comment or two. I can't imagine trying to do anything technical with a phone's onscreen keyboard. Even through an AI prompt... nope, just nope.

At worst, put your ideas into a notes app and then go back to where you are... this is just anti-social and borderline psychotic imo.

rbergamini2721• 7 months ago

Yes to the last two 100% - hence the "doom" in doom coding! I wrote the post more as a replacement to TikTok scrolling - it feels like a worse evil, but it's still not healthy.

The UI isn't as good as a laptop but maybe it's all my years of swiping, liking, and navigating between apps. In a very sad and concerning way, phone time feels like home.

mattacular• 7 months ago

Account created 16 hours ago posting highly dubious AI hype? This user is almost certainly part of the intense astroturfing campaign likely financed by Anthropic that has been ongoing for days/weeks now.

334f905d22bc19• 7 months ago

Did I read that right, that you have to have your computer unlocked at all times?

Yeah what can go wrong when you are travelling and your computer is at home unlocked lmao?

lrvick5• 7 months ago

This makes me worry about the future where I will be unable to hire anyone that actually knows how to solve novel engineering problems via programming with a real keyboard on a real computer with their actual brains.

To be honest it is already starting to feel that way.

knivets• 7 months ago

I have been building a code from phone web app and doogfooding a lot - https://x.com/knivets/status/2003023386080092235?s=46

Havoc• 7 months ago

Chromebook maybe but I don’t see myself using a phone unless maybe it’s voice driven. Typing up lots on phones is a pain.

sylware• 7 months ago

Fixed IPv6 workstation, ssh (pre-shared key) and vim, 4G usb modem, a "big" screen, nice battery life, "code anywhere" on your workstation (the best would be a "backpack" modular system: a RISC-V board in its case slapped to a "big" DP/eDP screen on a stand, an usb dvorak [ortholinear|columnar] keyboard, a 4[5]G usb modem (using the USB modem standard) with a IPv6 enable mobile ISP sim card, and a rather good battery pack.

(I even use a webcam to capture what my monitor does display when I do remote coding of low level GFX oriented software! Actually my wayland compositor for linux and AMD GPUs)

BTW, IPv6 = ZERO NAT to setup, delicious.

"It's magic".

grep_name• 7 months ago

I already have a similar setup for developing on remote servers I've been using with tmux + goose-cli + claude via openrouter. I've found that anything claude 4.x and above becomes very expensive very quickly, with 3.7 being almost negligibly inexpensive. I'd find myself using $30 dollars of credits in a few hours of development on a small scope project. I might give the claude CLI a look specifically, but I don't expect great savings and I will miss my AI-provider-agnostic setup. Is everyone using this technology just programming as they go about their day and burning like fifty to a hundred bucks while doing so?

tropicalhunter• 7 months ago

I am still trying to understand how installing Tailscale and Claude Code then connecting to your home network externally and opening a mobile terminal on your phone is a novel idea that requires a full Github writeup.

So, I do this when I am sitting on the couch and too lazy to boot up my laptop that I normally do work on, but it never gets much further than updating, pulling or pushing one or two containers, or more times than not trying to remember what port AI have something on so I can connect the companion app to it.

It's not a bad idea in full, but "death coding" is a ridiculous notion.

artdigital• 7 months ago

I’m equally surprised to see these posts pop up everywhere on X, GitHub and now also HN. Am I that old that SSHing into a server through a VPN is such a novel concept nowadays?

thenoblesunfish2• 7 months ago

I think the commonly used platforms, ISPs, etc. make this just annoying enough that most people really don't know how easy this should be.

a1371• 7 months ago

There is an infamous "Dropbox comment" on HN that reads the same way as this comment. No idea is new, and novelty is almost never the point. I had seen people do similar things in the past but never approached it myself. Here is someone that has done the thinking for me and put it out there for free. I appreciate that.

daveguy• 7 months ago

Yeah, but the OP is more like the "all you have to do is rsync and cron job". It's an article about the relatively complex step by step process that people do to implement a functionality. It may be the inspiration for an analogous dropbox, but definitely not the dropbox article or post. A product that you could grab from the app store that does all of this out of the box would be the analogue to dropbox.

That said, this would be interesting to someone who didn't know these tools could be stitched together in this way. I think that's a big part of why it's on the home page.

pksebben• 7 months ago

the comment, for the interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

kristofferR• 7 months ago

Why would it have to be novel? We now have a full interesting discussion about vibe coding on phones thanks to this GitHub writehub that we wouldn't have had otherwise.

I haven't set up a vibe coding phone environment, nothing has stopped me at all as I agree it is really simple/"basic", but this post made me actually go do it.

newsoftheday• 7 months ago

I see the article is still on the front page, I'd ignored it yesterday so I took a quick read. I find, being older, trying to read the tiny fonts on a phone to be difficult after a few minutes, otherwise cool idea.

Or, I thought it was cool until this passage reminded me, "coded a prototype in my downtime" that down time is supposed to be down time.

forgotaccount3• 7 months ago

down time is supposed to be down time.

Life doesn't have down time. Should we avoid learning new things because no one is paying us to learn?

One of my favorite uses of AI is to quickly make some simple 'hello world' level application that I can run using a given technology.

Don't know what an MCP server is? Boot up Kiro and tell it you want to make a sample MCP server and ask it for suggestions on what the MCP server should do. A relatively short while later, with a lot of that time being spent letting AI do it's thing, and you can have an MCP server running on your computer. You have an AI waiting for you to ask questions about why the MCP server does x y or z or how can you get the server to do a, b or c etc

As someone who learns a lot better from doing or seeing vs reading specs, this has been monumentally more efficient than searching the web for a good blog post explaining the concept.

And when I'm doing these learning exercises, I naturally lean towards the domain my company is in because it's easier to visualize how a concept could be implemented into a workflow when I understand the current pain points of that workflow.

I'm not going home and pulling in story's from my board and working on them (generally), I'm teaching myself new concepts in a way that also positions be to contribute better to my employer.

thenoblesunfish2• 7 months ago

Is being able to SSH into your home machine that easy these days? I never had a strong enough reason to spend more than a few minutes trying, but I always suspected that my ISP would make this harder for me than I would hope.

utopiah3• 7 months ago

That's the whole point of Tailscale or just any VPN really : it doesn't matter what your ISP says, as long as you can establish a connection to the outside, the outside can connect back. Tailscale just makes that easier if you are not familiar with VPN setup.

FWIW typically ISP blocks port related to spamming, so usually they block ports related to emails, e.g. SMTP, I believe DNS too, but other ports no problem.

That being said it's quite a silly use case IMHO. If you want to work on a project from "anywhere" then put your project on your server accessible from anywhere, that's literally what servers are for and they cost the price of a coffee per month.

scottLobster2• 7 months ago

Maybe I'm just lacking in creativity, but I don't see the appeal of developing anything with less than 2 monitors and a full-sized keyboard. Even for those who find the act of coding intrinsically entertaining, do you want to dance so badly that you'll do so even if you can only use one leg?

utopiah3• 7 months ago

I'll bite (even though I think the proposed setup is dumb tbh) : why do you need 2 monitors? Can't you just alt-tab from one window to another?

FWIW I do code on the go and I 100% prefer to code at home with my neat setup... but also quite often when I'm on the move and inspiration strikes, I do enjoy having a way to tinker right here and there.

scottLobster2• 7 months ago

I can, but I find the friction it induces to be extremely irritating. I have to memorize snippets of documentation before switching back instead of just having it open on the other monitor to reference at a glance. Plus the act of switching windows itself is extra keystrokes/touch gestures and tedium. Coding on a small touch screen sounds like absolute hell. Like being forced to drive in stop-and-go traffic with a manual shift.

I'll do it only if I have no other choice (i.e. logged into a remote terminal-only server at work). If I have some flash of inspiration I'll write it down in Google Keep and try it out when I get back to my 3-monitor workstation.

But hey, we're all wired different

joshrw• 7 months ago

I prefer using a VPS instead of an old laptop. 2 improvements I’d recommend:

1. Use tmux to keep sessions alive

2. Launch Claude Code using the —-dangerously-skip-permissions flag to avoid annoying pauses in execution

It’s like having a team of full-time interns running in the cloud building your software

goferito• 6 months ago

How about using syncthing instead of ssh?

I explain: instead of enabling ssh to your computer, which may make some users uncomfortable, you use syncthing to sync the folder of the project you are working on. You can open claude code in any android terminal and keep working on the latest changes of your folder. No shell access given.

Anyone?

MarchApril• 6 months ago

Is this what the kids call "being performative" looks like? If you do this in my party, then please shut the door on the way out.

rbergamini2721• 6 months ago

FYI I just now caught a critical missing step of disabling IPv4 in your Tailscale settings to doom code via cell service. Many of you probably did not have an issue figuring out that missing step - but for those of you like me, apologies for not passing along the time-saving lesson learned!

mjqs2• 6 months ago

You beat me and described this setup first. I saw your post as I was writing mine. I referenced your page on my blog :D

I think TMUX also deserves a mention

https://mjqs.blog/meta/

Stop Doom Scrolling, Start Doom Coding: Build via the terminal from your phone

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