Claude Code Remote Control: Your AI Coding Agent in Your Pocket

Run /rc in your terminal. Open the link on your phone. Your Mac's Claude Code session is now in your pocket.

Claude Code Remote Control — Artificial Intelligence

Claude Code Remote Control connects a phone to the same coding session running in a workstation terminal, retaining its context, tools and project access.

One slash command. That's all it took.

The Discovery

I run multiple Claude Code sessions on my Mac daily. Terminal tabs with different projects, different contexts, different conversations. It's my default workflow now — Claude Code is the backbone of how I build.

But I'd never tried /rc.

The moment I typed it, a link appeared in the terminal. I tapped it on my iPhone. The Claude iOS app opened, and there it was — my full Claude Code session, with all its context, tools, and filesystem access, right in my hand.

The phone controlled the existing terminal session remotely.

How It Works

Remote Control (/rc) turns your local Claude Code session into a remotely accessible one:

  • Your Mac stays in control. Claude Code keeps running locally with full access to your filesystem, tools, and project configuration.
  • No inbound ports. Your machine only makes outbound HTTPS requests. Nothing opens up on your network.
  • Encrypted in transit over HTTPS/TLS. Messages pass through the Anthropic API, and the synchronized session transcript is stored on Anthropic servers under the applicable data-use policy. TLS does not establish secrecy from the service itself.
  • Multi-device sync. Send messages from the terminal, the browser, or the mobile app. Everything stays in sync.

Your local machine is the execution engine. The phone is just another interface to the same conversation.

Setting It Up

It's almost embarrassingly simple:

  1. Open Claude Code in your terminal
  2. Type /rc
  3. A link appears — open it on your phone or in a browser
  4. The Claude app opens with your session. Start chatting.

That's it. Your phone is now a remote for your AI coding agent.

You need a Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise subscription with claude.ai login. If your laptop sleeps, the session reconnects automatically when it wakes up.

For full details, check the official Remote Control documentation.

Why This Changes Things

This isn't just a cool trick. It changes when and where you can interact with your development environment.

Review code from anywhere. Waiting for coffee? Pull up your session and ask Claude to explain that function you were looking at.

Unblock yourself on the go. Got an idea while walking? Tell Claude to scaffold it. The files will be ready on your Mac when you get back.

Monitor long-running tasks. Kicked off a big refactor? Check progress from your phone without context-switching on your workstation.

The Meta Moment

The same interface can handle writing, file edits and project maintenance from a phone while the terminal session continues on the workstation.

If that's not the future, I don't know what is.

Getting Started

If you're already using Claude Code, you're one command away:

/rc

Open the link. Connect. Build from anywhere.

Related Reading

  • Zed: The Convergence — Three apps doing the work of one. Zed brings the editor, terminal and AI workflow into a single interface.
  • The Last Machine — A speculative essay about computing beyond the laptop, including the sensing, power, networking and finite cloud resources such an interface would still require.
  • The Last Interface — A speculative exploration of neural interfaces, separating demonstrated assistive control from unproven thought-to-software capabilities.
  • The Architect's Protocol — A practical architecture for AI-assisted engineering: maintained Markdown knowledge, explicit task context, versioned decisions, and review of generated work.
  • Claude Code Computer Use: Your AI Can Now See and Control Your Screen — How Claude Code computer use works, how to enable it, and how to turn desktop interaction into evidence for a development task.
  • Codex Mobile — Use Codex remotely from a paired mobile device. Host-level access uses the selected environment’s tools and permissions; isolation depends on configuration.

Reference: Claude Code Remote Control: connection and security (documentation checked 20 September 2026).

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