Show HN: Catnip – Run Claude Code from Your iPhone Using GitHub Codespaces

by vanpelt • 7 months ago

9 6 7 months ago

Hi HN — I built Catnip, an open-source iOS app that lets you run Claude Code against a real development environment from your phone.

Under the hood it spins up a GitHub Codespace, installs Claude Code, and connects the iOS client to it securely. You can use a full terminal when needed, or a lightweight native UI for monitoring and interaction.

I built this because Claude Code is most useful when it has access to a persistent environment with plugins, tools, and real repos — and I wanted that flexibility away from my laptop.

GitHub gives personal users 120 free Codespaces hours/month, and Catnip automatically shuts down inactive instances.

Open source: https://github.com/wandb/catnip App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/w-b-catnip/id6755161660

Happy to answer questions or hear feedback.

yodon2• 7 months ago

Nice - Two questions

(1) Are you able to send a push message to the phone when Claude Code is waiting for a permission approval or other user input?

(2) Any thoughts on making this available on desktop as well, so we can access the session from either phone or laptop depending on where we are in the day? (I'm assuming we could just connect directly to the session from a laptop, but the auto-shutdown-on-idle is a nice feature of catnip)

vanpelt3• 7 months ago

(1) This one is on the top of my list. I have a branch that sets up proper iOS notifications. Coming soon. (2) Yeah, I've considered making an actual desktop version. A hacky one exists already. You can run `catnip run` from your desktop and it will run catnip in a Docker container on your machine. There's a web interface, and it even works with native MacOS notifications.

yodon2• 7 months ago

Re: #2, I think I was looking for something different and likely simpler than what you were thinking... The session would still be running in a codespace, I just want to be able to start on my phone, then move to my Mac, which has a nicer keyboard, and still have the codespace automatically shut down when things go idle (depending on how you have that set up, it may be that I need a dedicated app for that, or it may be I just need to VA Code remote into the codespace).

altryne1• 7 months ago

This is so dope Chris! I wonder, can I continue sessions from my local Claude Code to Codespaces?

vanpelt3• 7 months ago

Oooo nice, not really yet... Claude stores your session history in ~/.claude/projects/-Path-to-git-repo on your local machine. I should definitely add a "teleport" command like the one claude itself has which let's you move sessions between machines. It's a little tricky with git state & un commited changes but definitely possible. I'll consider this an upvote for that feature.

Show HN: Catnip – Run Claude Code from Your iPhone Using GitHub Codespaces

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