phone-claude

Control Claude Code on your Mac from your iPhone. Works from anywhere, over an encrypted Tailscale mesh, with a persistent tmux session so Claude keeps working if your phone drops the connection.

You get: ssh into your Mac from your phone → attach to a tmux session → tell Claude to change code, run builds, push to GitHub, whatever.

What this sets up

1. Tailscale — a private encrypted network between your phone and your Mac. No port forwarding, no public IPs.
2. SSH — standard Remote Login on macOS.
3. tmux — persistent sessions. Claude keeps running when your phone disconnects.
4. pmset — keeps the Mac awake with the lid closed.
5. Claude Code — already on your Mac, just invoked from inside tmux.

Your Mac must stay powered on. Nothing can reach a machine that's off.

Install

git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USER/phone-claude.git
cd phone-claude
./install.sh

The script is idempotent. It installs tmux, checks for Tailscale and Claude Code, and prints the two system-level commands you need to run yourself (they require sudo or System Settings).

Manual steps the script can't do for you

1. Enable SSH

System Settings → General → Sharing → Remote Login → on. (Or: sudo systemsetup -setremotelogin on.)

2. Prevent sleep

sudo pmset -a disablesleep 1
sudo pmset -a sleep 0

To undo: sudo pmset -a disablesleep 0 && sudo pmset -a sleep 1.

3. Install Tailscale on your phone

iOS App Store → Tailscale → sign in with the same account as your Mac.

Use it

On your Mac, start a named tmux session with Claude running:

tmux new -s claude
claude

Detach with Ctrl-b d. Claude keeps running.

From your phone:

1. Open a terminal app (Termius, Blink Shell, a-Shell).
2. ssh yourusername@<mac-tailscale-ip> — find the IP with tailscale ip -4 on your Mac.
3. tmux attach -t claude to reattach.
4. Type your request: "go into ~/code/my-project and add a health check endpoint".

Claude runs on your Mac with full access to your local files and tools.

Optional: GitHub-synced skills

Write Claude skills in markdown on your phone via the GitHub mobile app, and have them appear on your Mac automatically.

# On your Mac
mkdir -p ~/code && cd ~/code
gh repo create my-claude-skills --public --clone
mv ~/.claude/skills ~/.claude/skills.bak
ln -s ~/code/my-claude-skills ~/.claude/skills

Add to your crontab (crontab -e) to auto-pull every 5 minutes:

*/5 * * * * cd ~/code/my-claude-skills && /usr/bin/git pull --quiet

Now edit SKILL.md files in the GitHub mobile app. They land on your Mac within 5 minutes.

Security notes

• Tailscale traffic is end-to-end encrypted (WireGuard). Nothing exposed to the public internet.
• SSH is only reachable over your Tailscale network, not over the open internet.
• Use key-based SSH auth, not passwords: ssh-keygen on your phone, copy the pubkey into ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on your Mac.
• Lock your Mac before leaving. A stolen unlocked Mac is a bigger problem than anything this repo solves.

Caveats

• Mac must be on. Lid can be closed. Power cannot be off.
• Mac must have internet. Tailscale won't bridge a disconnected machine.
• Claude Code updates. Restart your tmux session after claude update.

License

MIT.