Running production from my phone

Where were you the last time you had a really good idea? Chances are you weren't sitting at your desk. A lot of mine show up on the couch next to my wife or while I'm going about my day. For most of my life, the only thing I could do with an idea like that was try to remember it until I got back to a keyboard.

Now I don't have to. My Mac runs about twenty AI agents at a time, and my phone is connected to all of them. When an idea hits, I hand it to an agent right then. By the time I'm back at my desk, the work has already started.

I think this is one of the most effective habits in my whole setup. Your brain is always churning on something, and your best ideas won't all show up while you're at your desk. If your agents are a text away, none of those ideas have to wait.

• 2in 3

  of my phone messages go out before 9, after 6 or on a weekend

• 318

  messages to my agents from my phone, on 30 of 40 days

• 2min

  to unblock a waiting agent from my phone

Your brain keeps working on problems in the background, even when you aren't thinking about them. I can be doing something that has nothing to do with work, and part of my mind is still on a problem I left at my desk. When it finds something, the idea just shows up, usually when I'm nowhere near a keyboard.

Minds wander more than you'd expect. One study pinged 2,250 adults on their iPhones at random moments and asked whether they were thinking about something other than what they were doing. Nearly half the time (46.9%), they were.¹

That wandering does real work. In a 2012 experiment, people listed creative uses for everyday objects, took a break, and then tried the same objects again. The people who spent the break on an easy task, the kind that lets your mind drift, came back with more ideas than before. The people who rested, did a hard task or skipped the break didn't improve.²

For me, the ideas usually come in the evening. I'm on the couch, hanging out with my wife, and when I get bored I check in on what my agents have finished. Seeing the day's work is often what sets off the next idea. Sometimes it connects to a problem I've been working on. Other times I think of a better way to do a job that's already running.

When an idea shows up, I want it out of my head right away, before I lose it. Holding on to it has a cost, too. In a study of unfinished goals, psychologists at Florida State found that an unfinished goal kept pulling at people's attention. It caused intrusive thoughts and made them worse at unrelated tasks. When people made a specific plan for the goal, those effects went away.³

Handing an idea to an agent is about as specific as a plan gets, because the agent starts on it right away. (A note in my phone would just sit there.)

My messages show how often this happens. When I message my agents from my phone, two out of every three messages go out before 9 am, after 6 pm or on a weekend. At my desk, only one in three does. Over 40 days, I sent at least 318 messages to my agents from my phone, on 30 different days.

There's a beauty in working this way. When I come back to an idea later, the agent has already built on it. Instead of a quick note to myself, I find a more developed version of the idea, ready for me to judge.

You might think a phone is only good for quick yeses, and that real decisions have to wait for the desk. To check, I compared 318 messages I sent from my phone with 220 random messages I typed at my Mac. The work was pretty much the same. On both, a third or more of my messages made a decision for the agent, like which option to take. The messages were also the same length, a median of 15 words.

What I save for my desk is the deep work. From my phone, I only take on jobs that don't need much deep thought or careful checking, because I'm usually in the middle of something else. Anything sensitive waits for the desk too.

Some of my best ideas come from using my own products on my phone. When I'm building something people will use on their phones, like my company's mobile app, I test it the way a customer would. When a screen feels wrong, I send the agent that feedback on the spot, while I can still feel what's wrong with it.

It isn't only work ideas, either. When I remember an errand, I hand that off right away too. My browser agent, Aside, works inside my signed-in browser on the Mac, and I text it from Slack. (The signed-in browser explains how it works.) From my phone, I've had it shop in my own accounts, search four inboxes for one detail, book a haircut on a site that wanted a new account first, and look up golf tee times. About 18% of the messages I send from my phone are errands like these. At my desk, it's 8%.

Being connected also means my agents don't sit and wait for me. Agents ask me things all day, like which option to take or whether something is OK to ship. I looked at the questions my agents asked while I was away from my desk between October 20 and 31. About half the time, I answered from my phone, and the median answer took 2.2 minutes. The other half waited until I was back at my desk, which took a median of 3.4 hours.

It matters most when production breaks. Production is the live system our customers use, and one evening ours broke while I was nowhere near my desk.

I never saw the code that night. I trusted the fix anyway, for two reasons. First, the agent's diagnosis showed it was a simple problem with a simple fix. Second, my system had already handled problems a lot like it. I didn't need to double-check it from a basketball court.

If a friend asked me how to run one agent from their phone this week, I'd give them two routes. Pick whichever fits how you already work.

Route one is a browser agent you text. Aside runs in your own signed-in browser on your computer, so it can do errands on any site you're logged into. Connect it to a chat app you already use. I text mine through Slack, and Aside's docs also mention Telegram.⁴ From then on, a message from your phone becomes a job on your computer.

Route two is Claude Code with Remote Control. Claude Code is Anthropic's coding agent. Its Remote Control feature lets you open a session that's running on your computer from the Claude app on your phone.⁵ Turn it on for every session, not one at a time. To do that, run /config in Claude Code and switch on "Enable Remote Control for all sessions." I use the same setting in the Claude desktop app. Then open the Claude app on your phone, and every running session will be there for you to read and answer.

Either route only works while the computer is awake, because the phone is just a window into it. On a Mac, open System Settings, go to Battery, click Options, and turn on "Prevent automatic sleeping on power adapter when the display is off."⁶ A free app called Amphetamine does the same thing, with more options.⁷ My Mac runs a built-in command when I log in (caffeinate -s) that keeps it awake whenever it's plugged in.

Then keep it plugged in. One week in late October, my Mac spent stretches unplugged with the lid shut. It slept for up to 4.8 hours a day, and during those hours my phone had nothing to talk to.

Three habits make either route work on a phone:

1. Ask for short replies. Tell your agents to lead with what they need from you and to number their questions. Then you can answer with something like "1 yes, 2 B."
2. Ask for another route. When an agent says it needs you at your desk, ask it for a workaround, like handing the step to a browser agent that's already signed in.
3. Answer from where you are. A question you answer from your phone keeps the work moving instead of holding it until you sit down.

• My logs don't record which device I used. I counted a message as "from my phone" when it came through a phone app, when nobody was touching the Mac, or when I said so. The real counts can only be higher.
• I tend to answer the easy questions from my phone, so the two-minute figure flatters the phone a little. It only covers Claude Code agents.
• I sorted the messages myself, in one pass.

Handing an agent a new idea in the middle of its job is steering from farther away, and Helm is how I keep track of everything my agents are doing.

My challenge for you is this. The next time a good idea hits you away from your desk, don't try to remember it. Hand it to an agent right then, and see what it has turned into by the time you sit back down.