notaps Oshi
Fan activity in one place
SOLO COMMAND ROOM
Reach the machine at home
from a single iPhone.
Closing the laptop does not stop the work. One machine at home stays on as a base, you reach it from anywhere, and AI agents keep running inside it. This is a Mac mini that is actually in service.
"Should I use Tailscale or mosh?"
The question confuses two layers. Tailscale is the road; mosh is the window. Comparing things that sit at different layers has no answer. The real question is which road, and through which window, you reach the base.
Four layers, not a comparison
They stack. No single one of them is the setup.
- Road
Tailscale
A path to the machine at home from anywhere. Traverses NAT, needs no static IP, opens no ports.
- Window
mosh / Moshi
Runs down that road without breaking. Switch networks or sleep the phone, and the session is still there.
- Desk
tmux
A session that does not disappear. Close the window and the desk stays; open the same desk from another device.
- Base
Mac mini
Always on. The agents live here. Whatever is in your hand is only a window onto it.
Why a base rather than a closed laptop
Running a laptop closed for hours fights its own thermals, which is the wrong trade for work that keeps agents busy for a long stretch. A machine that stays put can run without you thinking about heat or power. The iPhone and the MacBook go back to being windows.
What this looks like day to day
The phone, the Mac mini and the MacBook all see the same terminal.
- One flick on the phone switches sessions
- An Apple Watch complication tells you when a job finishes
- Codex, Claude and Grok run side by side on the same base
- Voice input works, so the work continues with your hands full
- A whole app can be built and shipped in commute time
Where it does not help
This pays off for work that finishes inside the base. Fine-grained GUI work, debugging against a physical device, and design work that needs a wide screen are all faster sitting in front of the machine. It is not a universal environment.
The whole build is in a short book
A fifteen-minute read. Twelve chapters cover reaching the base, keeping the connection alive, keeping the session alive, and putting AI agents to work in each window — including lockout prevention and the recovery notes from the time tmux went down with the server.
Read on KindleBuilt with this setup
Every app below was built and shipped from this setup, mostly during a commute.
notaps Words
Passive vocabulary learning
第一種衛生管理者
Exam practice with statutory citations