I wanted to check on my agents from my phone. Not in a "wouldn't it be cool" way. In a "I'm at dinner and I need to tell my agent what to do next before it sits idle" way.
That's why we built the Remote Pane browser app. Open runpane.com/app on your phone, paste a connection code, and you're controlling the same agents running on your desktop. Same sessions, same terminals, same output. Your phone is just the screen.
how it works
Remote Pane has two pieces: a daemon on the machine that runs your agents (the host), and a UI on the device in front of you (the client). The daemon handles your sessions, terminals, and agent processes. The client just shows you what's happening and lets you interact.
The easiest setup uses Tailscale. Install Tailscale on both devices, sign in, and Pane handles the rest. It sets up Tailscale Serve so the daemon is reachable from your phone without opening any ports. The connection is encrypted with WireGuard end-to-end.
# On your desktop (the host):
npx --yes runpane@latest install daemon --label "My Desktop"
# It prints a pane-remote://... code.
# Paste that into runpane.com/app on your phone.why not just ssh?
SSH gives you a shell. Remote Pane gives you the full Pane experience: sessions, panels, terminal streaming, file access, git status, diffs, and permission prompt routing. The daemon understands Pane's data model. SSH just pipes bytes.
That said, SSH is still supported as a tunnel option. If you can't use Tailscale, you can forward the daemon port over SSH. See Remote Pane over SSH for the exact commands.
the real use case
I don't use my phone to write code. I use it to check on things. Is the agent done? Does it need a follow-up prompt? Did the review pass? Do I need to steer it before it sits idle?
That's a 30-second interaction. Open the app, check status, approve or type a quick response, close it. The agents keep working on the desktop. I go back to dinner.
If you're running agent loops that take hours, mobile access changes how you work. You don't have to sit at your desk waiting. The agents work, you check in when it's convenient.
install the pwa
On iPhone: open runpane.com/app in Safari, tap Share, tap Add to Home Screen. On Android: open it in Chrome, tap the menu, tap Install app. Now it lives on your home screen like a native app.
Remote Pane is free, open source, and self-hosted. There's no Pane cloud service. Your code stays on your machine. The phone just gives you a window into it.