The same live session,
on every device you own.

The three pieces (all free)

Tailscale gives your phone a private, encrypted path to your machine from anywhere — no port forwarding, no public IP. tmux keeps the session alive between connections. An SSH app on the phone is the window into it.

One-time setup · ~5 minutes

1. Install Tailscale on both devices.

   tailscale.com/download on the Mac (or Linux box) and the phone app store; sign both into the same tailnet. Note your machine's tailnet name (e.g. teds-macbook).

2. Enable SSH on the machine.

   macOS: System Settings → General → Sharing → Remote Login (or sudo systemsetup -setremotelogin on). Linux: sudo systemctl enable --now sshd. Prefer key auth: generate a key in the phone app, paste the public key into ~/.ssh/authorized_keys.

3. Install tmux

   brew install tmux (macOS) or your package manager. Recommended for cellular: brew install mosh.

4. Pick a phone SSH app.

   iOS: Blink Shell (best keyboard for TUIs, mosh built in) or Termius. Android: Termius or JuiceSSH. Add a host entry for the tailnet name so connecting is one tap.

Daily use

On the machine, start (or rejoin) cheep inside tmux:

tmux new -As cheep    # -As: attach if it exists, create if not
cheep

From the phone:

ssh teds-macbook -t 'tmux attach -t cheep'
# flaky networks / switching wifi↔cellular:
mosh teds-macbook -- tmux attach -t cheep

You're now in the exact same session — same conversation, same running task, same tabs, same pending approvals. Detach with ctrl+b d (or just close the app; tmux doesn't care). Anything you started from the phone is still there when you sit back down at the desk — and vice versa.

The walk-away workflow

# at your desk:
› rewrite the storage layer to use sqlite; iterate until `go test ./...` passes
/budget 3                # bound the worst case
# … leave. later, from the couch:
ssh teds-macbook -t 'tmux attach -t cheep'
# glance at the tab glyphs (● running · ✓ done · ⚠ stuck · ✗ error),
# /tokens for spend, answer any queued approval, queue the next task, detach

Pair it with /nomistakes on and nothing can merge while you're away — held work waits on branches for your sign-off, and the approval overlay is right there the next time you attach. Before a long break, /stow writes lessons and a done / in-flight / next-steps note to ~/.cheep/history/notes.md. If the machine ever dies mid-task, the next launch lists exactly which delegations were interrupted and which branches hold their partial work.

Tips

• Phone keyboardscheep leans on Tab / Shift+Tab / Ctrl+W / Esc. Blink and Termius both show a key toolbar above the keyboard; slash commands (/mode, /close, /history) cover the same actions when a chord is awkward.
• mosh > ssh on the movemosh roams across wifi/cellular and survives the phone sleeping for hours. Blink has it built in; brew install mosh on the machine.
• Keep the machine awakemacOS: caffeinate -s in another tmux window, or Energy Settings → prevent sleep on power. A sleeping Mac runs no agents.
• Scrollbackctrl+b [ puts tmux in copy mode for scrolling history; q exits. Inside cheep, PgUp/PgDn scroll the focused tab.
• Zellij works toozellij attach behaves the same way. Browser-based alternative: ttyd (ttyd -W tmux attach -t cheep bound to the tailnet address), but SSH + tmux is less to secure.
• Why not a built-in server?A future cheep serve could host the shell over the web — but tmux gives attach/detach resilience, multi-device access, and scrollback for free, with Tailscale handling auth and encryption. It works today.

Cheat sheet