543 points by empressplay 5 days ago | 318 comments on HN
| Moderate positive
Contested
Product · v3.7· 2026-02-26 00:33:37 0
Summary Digital Access & Information Freedom Neutral
This page documents Claude Code's Remote Control feature, which enables session continuity across devices. The content is neutrally framed as a technical feature without explicit human rights language. Structurally, the page demonstrates accessibility and openness principles (responsive design, dark/light mode, public access) that indirectly support information access (Article 19) and inclusive digital access (Articles 2, 13, 25, 26), though these alignments are incidental rather than intentional.
Opencode's 'web' command makes your local session run on the browser with same access rights as the cli. It's a pretty slick interface too. I sometimes use it instead of the cli even when I can access both.
You can test it right now if you want with the included free models.
Worth noting that this is currently broken for a number of users, I'm on a Max plan and I get the message "Error: Remote Control is not enabled for your account. Contact your administrator" which isn't helpful since I'm my administrator and ... this gets recursive quickly.
I feel like a lot of folks are saying this kills the Code on your Phone opportunity some start-ups are building for. I don't agree. I feel like coding agents are like streaming services, we will subscribe to multiple and switch between them. So for one there's value in a universal control plane. The other is that mobile as a coding interface should offer more than a remote control to the desktop. I think there's still some space to cook, especially if people are investing 8 hours a day talking to agents, the interface surely matters.
I've been running something similar for a few months, which is a voice-first interface for Claude Code running on a local Flask server. Instead of texting from my phone, I just talk to it. It spawns agents in tmux sessions, manages context with handoff notes between sessions, and has a card display for visual output.
The remote control feature is cool but the real unlock for me was voice. Typing on a phone is a terrible interface for coding conversations. Speaking is surprisingly natural for things like "check the test output" or "what did that agent do while I was away."
The tmux crowd in this thread is right that SSH + tmux gets you 90% of the way there. But adding voice on top changes the interaction model. You stop treating it like a terminal and start treating it like a collaborator.
Claude Code Team: Please fix the core experience instead of branching out into all these tertiary features. I know it is fun and profit to release new features but you need to go deeper into features not broader into there be dragons territory.
Weird all these companies struggle so much to support remote services, ssh has been working for me pretty seamlessly for like the 20 years I've been using it and has allowed me to remote-control any computer I own with relatively reliable authentication (with some hiccups that tend to be patched pretty rapidly when found) throughout that entire period. I hear tell it worked even before I was using computers professionally, too
If you want this to compete with tools in the OpenClaw space, I’d prioritize first class Telegram and Slack support. Push progress into a chat thread, and let me approve, retry, cancel from there. That’s where teams live. A separate mobile frontend will always feel clunky and fragile.
Maybe it’s related to what I tend to use the agents for, but I guess I don’t understand what is this for. Typically I try to structure the tasks in a way that require me to do or check something important when the agent gets back to me. If the agents query is trivial enough I can respond from my phone, it was likely not needed at all. If the agent finished - fine. It will have to wait until I get back in front of the computer anyway.
I used it to add a MIDI driver and support to my OS this afternoon. Worked okay, but I agree it is a bit clunky yet. I think it is pretty good for a preview release. Much better than nothing.
I built a project achieving similar goals. You launch a web server then connect to it using either browser or Android app, then create a session to talk to Claude Code. The sessions are synchronized in real time across all devices and automatically saved to disk and continued when server restarts. Recently I've added features to schedule tasks in the future and to assemble agent teams. The project is mostly vibe-coded with Opus 4.6 with few supervision beyond trying its functionalities out.
FWIW I just tried this to monitor / shepherd a PR while I was on the exercise bike and it was pretty seamless. Way easier than the tailscale/vibetunnel thing I got burnt out on last fall.
I was using the Claude app on my iPhone and claude code on a MacBook pro. PR is merged, still on the bike :)
Well it DOES have less storage than a Nomad (hence lame), but this way you don't need to pay for a public IP address, or for a VPS to run Wireguard on, or for a commercial VPN solution, and then install a terminal emulator on your phone and set up SSH keys.
I agree. I spend a lot of time working from my phone so I had to make my own workflow that works for me. I've been following all these bans and drama with the subscription keys and custom harnesses etc. I think there's room for a "universal control plan" that lets you leverage the CLI providers (and whatever crappy interfaces / apis they give you).
Fair point technically, but I think the value proposition isn't the persistent session, rathere it's the abstraction layer. Screen/tmux assumes you know what commands to run. This assumes you know what outcome you want. For someone like me who came to coding late and doesn't have 20 years of muscle memory with terminal tools, the inefficiency in transport is more than offset by the efficiency in intent. Different tools for different people.
I don't know a single person who is satisfied with the status quo on streaming services where you have to subscribe to multiple ones. Everyone is complaining that the landscape is 1) more fragmented than cable was, 2) costs more, 3) has even more ads than cable
That's a bummer. I was looking forward to testing this, but that seems pretty limiting.
My current solution uses Tailscale with Termius on iOS. It's a pretty robust solution so far, except for the actual difficulty of reading/working on a mobile screen. But for the most part, input controls work.
My one gripe with Termius is that I can't put text directly into stdin using the default iOS voice-to-text feature baked into the keyboard.
People tried reinventing terminals, SSH, and tmux for phones. It's a pretty terrible experience using your thumbs. And it takes significant know-how to set up.
And in modern stacks, it almost necessitates a man in the middle - tailscale is common but it's still a central provider. So is it really the most inefficient way possible?
I've used similar things (omnara/happy) while taking walks. Sometimes I'll get an idea about the problem I'm working on and I can just dictate it into my phone and check in 15min later. I stopped being able to do that when claude added those nice interview panes to clarify things because it didn't work back then. But mostly it's really annoying when you think you've created the plan/prompt and that it's ready to go. But it gets stuck or decided to stop while you're away. I pretty often need to give Claude a "continue" kick. To be fair this happens far less after Opus 4.6.
Also, I felt the need to use it far more when I was on Pro vs a Max plan. On Pro when you hit the usage windows it's nice to be able to kick claude back into gear without scheduling your life around getting back to the terminal to type "continue".
- Plan mode -> answer questions/make corrections, continue planning
- Some of us don't do full yolo mode all the time, then tool approvals or code reviews are required, nice to do a quick review and decide if you need to go back to your computer or not
- Letting claude spin or handle a long-running task outside of normal work hours and being able to check in intermittently to see if something crashed
Exactly my experience, I know they vibe code features and that’s fine but it looks like they don’t do proper testing which is surprising to me because all you need bunch of cheap interns to some decent enough testing
Yes. Doing the same. What is the advantage of this new feature? Tmux/Tailscale/Termius give you full control of your terminal.
Or mainly to save the end user the hassle to set it up correctly?
I don't dangerously accept permissions outside of a few scripts I have reviewed as safe. This means claude gets stuck often when testing it's work, but also means it doesn't uninstall production workloads from the kubernetes cluster.
I was using this religiously but there’s a bug currently that makes the initialization fail and/or throws an error on the phone client.
Absolutely great piece of software otherwise, free, anonymous, encrypted and so on. Really hope the team can fix this soon - I would hate to switch back to tmux tunneling.
Claude Code is a good product, they should just keep on steadily improving it and improving the model. I am not sure why they are spraying in all directions like this..
I have just today discovered zmx [1] which is like tmux but I always hated the tmux terminal emulation and how it hijacks scrolling, especially on Termius on my phone. It does session persistence but I think without the terminal emulator side of things, so scrolling works normally.
Been testing it today with Claude Code and it seems to work quite well switching between my laptop and phone.
Same here on my iPhone. I didn't previously log it into my github account as I don't use github anymore, I use gitlab. So it wont find anything useful there. You actually only need to do this in order to be able to access the list of sessions. Even if you don't log into github, remote-control still works if you copy across the link that the cli tool outputs for you and just visit that on your phone. That's a bit of a pain though of course.
First of all /remote-control in the terminal just printed a long url. Even though they advertise we can control it from the mobile app (apparently it should show a QR code but doesn't). I fire up the mobile app but the session is nowhere to be seen. I try typing the long random URL in the mobile browser, but it simply throws me to the app, but not the session. I read random reddit threads and they say the session will be under "Code", not "Chats", but for that you have to connect github to the Claude app (??, I just want to connect to the terminal Claude on my PC, not github). Ok I do it.
Now even though the session is idle on the pc, the app shows it as working... I try tapping the stop button, nothing happens. I also can't type anything into it. Ok I try starting a prompt on the pc. It starts the work on the PC, but on the mobile app I get a permission dialog... Where I can deny or allow the thing that actually already started on the pc because I already gave permission for that on the PC. And many more. Super buggy.
I wonder if they let Claude write the tests for their new features... That's a huge pitfall. You can think it works and Claude assures you all is fine but when you start it everything falls apart because there are lots of tests but none actually test the actual things.
Documentation describes a tool enabling information continuity across devices; indirectly relates to freedom of expression and information access by enabling persistent communication capability.
FW Ratio: 67%
Observable Facts
Documentation is publicly accessible without authentication or paywall.
Content is available in English and appears to support responsive display across devices.
Semantic HTML structure and dark/light mode toggle support varied reading preferences and accessibility.
No apparent content restrictions or censorship mechanisms observable.
Inferences
Public documentation access directly supports freedom to seek and receive information about available tools.
Accessibility features (theme toggle, responsive design) demonstrate structural support for information access across diverse user preferences.
Content describes freedom of movement across devices ('continue...from any device'), which has oblique relation to freedom of movement; framing emphasizes convenience and technical capability rather than rights.
Feature enabling continuous access to work sessions across devices indirectly relates to standards of living and adequate healthcare/work continuity; no explicit health or welfare framing.
FW Ratio: 60%
Observable Facts
Feature enables uninterrupted session continuation, which could support continuous work or access to computational tools.
Site implements accessibility features including responsive design and dark/light mode toggle.
Documentation is publicly available without cost, removing financial barriers to information access.
Inferences
Session continuity across devices indirectly supports user ability to maintain adequate standards of work access and productivity.
Free public documentation and accessibility features demonstrate structural support for equitable access to information about health/productivity tools.
Content emphasizes enabling device continuity and technical capability without explicit framing around dignity, freedom, or equality principles foundational to UDHR preamble.
FW Ratio: 60%
Observable Facts
Page title states 'Continue local sessions from any device with Remote Control'.
Site implements dark/light mode toggle and responsive design (max-width media queries).
Content is publicly accessible documentation without apparent paywall.
Inferences
The emphasis on cross-device continuity aligns tangentially with enabling human participation and agency, though not framed in rights language.
Accessibility features suggest awareness of inclusive design principles relevant to equal access to digital tools.
Content describes 'Remote Control' feature enabling device-to-device session continuation; obliquely relates to managing personal information/sessions across devices without explicit privacy framing.
FW Ratio: 60%
Observable Facts
Page title and content describe 'Remote Control' feature for continuing sessions across devices.
JavaScript code references localStorage for managing chat assistant state and user preferences.
No privacy policy or data handling statement is observable on the page itself.
Inferences
The localStorage implementation suggests the feature manages personal state data, which indirectly relates to privacy and personal information control.
Lack of explicit privacy transparency on the documentation page represents a gap in communicating how personal session data is protected.
Public, paywall-free documentation and responsive design provide open access to information about the feature; dark/light mode and semantic HTML support information accessibility.
Public access, responsive design, and accessibility features (dark/light mode, semantic HTML) support inclusive access to the documentation and by extension the feature itself.
Site implements responsive design and localStorage management (visible in page code), suggesting technical infrastructure for managing personal state; no explicit privacy policy observable on this page.
Session data management through localStorage suggests some technical infrastructure for protecting user state/sessions, which loosely relates to property in digital context.
Public documentation and responsive design provide structural support for learning and information access; code examples and technical descriptions facilitate understanding.