llm/9ad11e16-7acb-4923-bb7e-5d14cd36cf3f/topic-1-8434cbcc-15ea-4fb6-9bc0-394bb33180fc-input.json
The following is content for you to summarize. Do not respond to the comments—summarize them. <topic> Mobile Ergonomics and Friction # A major theme is the physical difficulty of coding on a smartphone. Commenters discuss the pain of typing on touchscreens, the inability to view side-by-side diffs effectively on small screens, and the general clumsiness of managing terminal windows without a physical keyboard. Many users argue that while the setup is technically possible, the lack of screen real estate and input precision makes it impractical for serious engineering work. </topic> <comments_about_topic> 1. >Email is clunky and feedback is not immediate. You're vibe coding on a smartphone into an external computer. You already abandoned "Immediate feedback" and "cohesion". 2. How do you type? I get the ydotool usage but do you have a shortcut for each key then on your phone? 3. yes but I've never seen a terminal interface embedded in a browser that is as good as a native terminal app interface, and blink shell has been well worth the upfront cost to me (way better than Termius, which was suggested in the writeup) 4. Is it easy to move the text cursor around in the text input in blink shell? 5. Claude Code does a very decent UI, somehow the text mode is much more attractive. As if there is once in a lifetime opportunity to make the console great again. 6. I’ve been doing some of this through a term on my phone, but it honestly sucks. Other interfaces (telegram, web ui, email) are gonna be much better experiences on your phone. 7. ive tried slack before, but a challenge is how well you can get results returned back in a way where you can actually see what it did and give proper next steps getting a PR back and being able to put comments on it is fine, but ive had middling success getting qcli at least to actually match the comments with the code that was commented on. i get the sense that there isnt any training with the comments inlined well on a diff:/ it doesnt have to be a vpn though, i was on an oauth webbrowser terminal, and things like coder[0] let you run vscode on the browser, including on your phone browser. there's also happy coder[1] which i tried using to connect between the new builtin android linux vm, and skip all the remote stuff entirely, but the phone would inevitably kill the terminal runbing claude, killing the whole thing. you can currently just run claude from your phone in that, which only has the problem that when the vm crashes, all you can do is wipe the partition. [0] https://coder.com/ [1] https://happy.engineering/ 8. You don't need a VPN to vibe code on your phone. I've been happily doing thumb-driven development for the last 4 months now using GitHub Copilot on github.com from my phone. It even has real-time chat with copilot as it works. Having your PRs deploy to an environment allows you to check it. I also have playwright tests that record screenshots and traces that get uploaded as artifacts I can check too. 9. I’d love this, if only for improved diff reviews possible compared to a terminal window! Would also work better for intermittent connectivity. 10. I'd rather have an DM interface and each task has its own little icon or face. You still have to set up one of the text servers and also do VPN but if you're already vibe coding that stuff why not make it more pleasant than TUI on your phone? 11. > Would an email interface to Claude code work better? This might be the most "when your only tool is a hammer all your problems look like nails" suggestion I've ever read. Email driven automation isn't a terrible solution to everything - it works very well for support tickets, for example - but it's really lacking in the immediacy required from a serious software development environment. I'll go further: I think coding on my phone is a fun, neat, idea, and an interesting curiosity, but I don't actually want to do it. There are few situations where I'd feel comfortable getting my phone out to code where I don't also have my laptop with me, and that's going to provide a way better software development experience, so I'm always going to use that for anything serious. 12. My thoughts went into a different direction: "Maybe I should buy a small tablet so that I can read code properly without carrying a full laptop?" (Sure, there might be small laptops of similar dimensions ... But as the name "laptop" suggests these are made for a different UX... and they require more effort to turn on/off) 13. > Great for parties where you rather be home tinkering. I know this is probably in jest, but when someone invites you to a party it's not because they just want your atoms in the same room as them. In regards to doom coding: I would chop off my arms before coding/prompting on a phone. Also, think about your cervical, neck etc! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills! 14. I'm with you... just with gesture input as it is, I hate using my phone for much beyond a quick comment or two. I can't imagine trying to do anything technical with a phone's onscreen keyboard. Even through an AI prompt... nope, just nope. At worst, put your ideas into a notes app and then go back to where you are... this is just anti-social and borderline psychotic imo. 15. Yes to the last two 100% - hence the "doom" in doom coding! I wrote the post more as a replacement to TikTok scrolling - it feels like a worse evil, but it's still not healthy. The UI isn't as good as a laptop but maybe it's all my years of swiping, liking, and navigating between apps. In a very sad and concerning way, phone time feels like home. 16. In the last 5 years I pretty much fully migrated to my laptop being a terminal for other machines. I more use it like a local machine in HPC: web browsing, word processing, scripting. Anything serious is done remotely. But I also live in the terminal and so realistically what's the difference? 99% of the time the result is that I get to use a "big" computer without having to carry it around. FWIW, I'm not a big fan of AI coding. I use AI (including LLMs) and I am an AI researcher, but the vibe coding just hasn't clicked despite constant efforts. I guess it can make more sense to do it if you're programming from your phone because while normally typing isn't the bottleneck it definitely is on the phone (or at least far less comfortable) 17. Sadly I'm an iPhone kid - and yeah the 24/7 computer running is not ideal. It's been nice building on the server that I'm using to host the app, but then again I could just run the Dockerfiles via QPython and push the code via git? 18. I remember when I started learning coding, and didn't have a computer. I literally used to use my phone to write code - terrible experience, but I was determined 19. It wasn't coding, but tech support...I was on vacation from my law office IT job. All I had was my PalmPilot, the clip-on modem, and my sister's landline phone system. I spent 2-3 hours one day exchanging email with my firm's law librarian (the only other semi-technical person in the firm) troubleshooting some odd network problem. We got it done, but it was torture, tapping out messages with the Palm's stylus. 20. I assume you’re joking, but I have a Cuban acquaintance who actually did something like this. He did everything on paper and even won a national coding competition without ever having actually used a computer. Of course, as soon as he had the opportunity to leave Cuba, he left for good. 21. Being able to “code” from your phone really feels like a huge change; it never took before because coding from your phone was miserable, but if you’re just coding by having a conversation then it might even be better to do it from your phone. I don’t know what that leads to, but it’s let me fix bugs from bed and build an MVP while moving, so I can’t complain. For anyone looking for a more integrated and smaller approach, I built an open source app builder + runtime: https://github.com/tinykit-studio/tinykit Basically gives you a Lovable-like app builder with built-in services (database/files/auth/email/payments/etc), content and design fields, and a code editor. Code is a single Svelte 5 file, and you can build/host unlimited apps on one server. And the server is just node + PocketBase, so runs easy on a $2 VPS. And LLM is BYOKey. 22. i switched to using neovim a year ago and oddly enough its actually a lot easier to write code in termux compared to any of the other android IDE type apps. they all have drop down menus or sidebars that are quite awkward to use, especially when the keyboard is already taking up half the screen, but with neovim (or vim) youre using the keyboard to do most things anyway, so the keyboard can just stay open all of the time and you never need to move your hand up to the actual app part. selecting text is way easier than android's implementation as well 23. Typing on the phone is terrible. Could work with good speech to text though 24. Back 15-20 years ago we had many phones with keyboards. They had a purpose but Apple's profits made everyone envious and they started to copy what the leader was doing even thought for some users a keyboard make much more sense. What make sense for all users would be a swap-able battery. Water-tightness is no longer and excuse with new phones likes foldables that aren't. Fun fact, Apple dumped the swap-able battery before the iPhone was waterproof. 25. >> There aren't that many places in 2025 where getting a phone with internet is significantly cheaper than getting some scrappy laptop or desktop. No, but it's not a choice between a phone and a laptop. You NEED a phone. So you use what you've got. I've done work helping developers in less developed countries and you frequently find they're sending screenshots of code they've written on phones. 26. There is this guy: https://github.com/OXY2DEV/markview.nvim/issues/216#issuecom... . I haven‘t used his plugin, but it seems quite popular (+3k stars). I guess ergonomics don‘t matter so much yet when you are young.. 27. There's always an edge case. Speaking of which, here's someone who would really benefit from a hard column width limit and limited nesting that modern programmers (particularly ones using various IDEs) so carelessly violate these days. 28. Following that story as it happened, it was all on the phone with the phone keyboard and he somehow made multiple good Neovim plugins including that very popular one (which I use in multiple configs). 29. neovim is probably the only sane way you could code like this on a small screen. everything works pretty much the same way it does on a desktop terminal, the only thing you have to get used to is having so many lines wrapped, and not having quick access to some characters like $ or ^, but they can just be added to the toolbar in termux 30. I use a bespoke hacker software keyboard (ctrl/meta/custom keys for GNU screen and emacs) and also bespoke SSH client (fork of the original irssiconnectbot) for years. My phone is the original Pixel Fold. You would think I use it unfolded but the passport form factor lends itself to be almost as productive folded that I use it that way most of the time. Unfolded it's just a bit better experience (bigger keys / more display real estate/ more characters per line/ etc). With that said I'm looking forward to the Click Communicator: https://clicks.tech/communicator I've also been meaning to write about my setup and open sourcing my tools. Oh. Writing clojure helps due to the terseness of the language. Not sure it would be a pleasant experience writing something like Java with the 80 character line limit I try to impose on myself 31. Maybe I'm just lacking in creativity, but I don't see the appeal of developing anything with less than 2 monitors and a full-sized keyboard. Even for those who find the act of coding intrinsically entertaining, do you want to dance so badly that you'll do so even if you can only use one leg? 32. I'll bite (even though I think the proposed setup is dumb tbh) : why do you need 2 monitors? Can't you just alt-tab from one window to another? FWIW I do code on the go and I 100% prefer to code at home with my neat setup... but also quite often when I'm on the move and inspiration strikes, I do enjoy having a way to tinker right here and there. 33. I can, but I find the friction it induces to be extremely irritating. I have to memorize snippets of documentation before switching back instead of just having it open on the other monitor to reference at a glance. Plus the act of switching windows itself is extra keystrokes/touch gestures and tedium. Coding on a small touch screen sounds like absolute hell. Like being forced to drive in stop-and-go traffic with a manual shift. I'll do it only if I have no other choice (i.e. logged into a remote terminal-only server at work). If I have some flash of inspiration I'll write it down in Google Keep and try it out when I get back to my 3-monitor workstation. But hey, we're all wired different 34. We need to take this idea further. Instead of "remote first", I'm waiting for the first company that will bodly declare "you can do all your work on your phone". I'm tired of lugging my laptop around. Let me work from the beach with my phone and ar glasses. 35. I see the article is still on the front page, I'd ignored it yesterday so I took a quick read. I find, being older, trying to read the tiny fonts on a phone to be difficult after a few minutes, otherwise cool idea. Or, I thought it was cool until this passage reminded me, "coded a prototype in my downtime" that down time is supposed to be down time. 36. Been using exactly this setup for a year now, works great. Have to be on the same WiFi to install from Xcode to iPhone. There is a “workaround” having it deploy to TestFlight, but it’s slow. Looking for a way to forward mDNS over VPN, to bad iPhone/Tailscale don’t support it. Only possibility I found is to have a separate mobile router that support forwarding mDNS. 37. Hmm, you could probably setup ad hoc builds and send them off to Firebase App Distribution or a similar service and get them a bit faster. Still pretty cumbersome but it skips the slow signing/slow uploads/slow processing that Test Flight provides for users. 38. I use Prompt, Ever Terminal, Whisper, EC2 and Claude Code. I can build anything with it. Having Claude on top of a terraform repo lets me fully control my infra. Claude is so good at AWS and terraform, and it even found a $3k monthly accidental spend I had running (also sent a refund request to hopefully get some credit back). Also have a Claude driven CI workflow in GitHub to help keep everything on track. Having full access to the Claude Code TUI is so much better than the web or iOS interface, plus everything runs on your own setup. And agree it has replaced doom scrolling / useless new reading. 39. I have been building a code from phone web app and doogfooding a lot - https://x.com/knivets/status/2003023386080092235?s=46 40. Claude iOS is way worse. You don’t get the full tui. 41. This makes me worry about the future where I will be unable to hire anyone that actually knows how to solve novel engineering problems via programming with a real keyboard on a real computer with their actual brains. To be honest it is already starting to feel that way. 42. I really want to use and like this, but I feel like I need a different UX / UI for my phone. I think adoption of this development workflow at large is going to be a design challenge more than a setup/devops one. 43. I agree- I think there is a good opportunity for a more slow-paced, thoughtful UX on mobile. 44. The Claude code tui is so nice. The web and iOS apps neuter it weirdly. 45. This is cute. My personal world changed when I discovered Nix On Droid and cloned my personal Claude Code flake which uses pnpm to keep a rolling bleeding edge version with revision controlled dots. I started using Nvim /avante and open router shortly after that, also via Nix on Droid. Game changer for those long subway rides. 46. It’s a simple idea but one that hadn’t occurred to me yet. I spend hours each week riding transit, and use Claude for a bunch of side projects and have Tailscale set up already, so looks like I’ll be giving this a try this week! Doom coding might be doomed while I’m in the transbay tube though, with awful cell service… How’s the diff review? I rely heavily on the vs code integration for nice side by side diffs, so losing that might be a problem unless there’s some way to launch the diffs into a separate diff viewer app on the phone. 47. https://github.com/dandavison/delta 48. I don’t compile from my phone but I do write code using it. I use fossil for version control. The in browser editor is good enough to get ideas down. It has great diffs which is also nice. I will check in code and move it to a branch then revisit it when I’m home. 49. I would guess a phone is way too small for side by side diffs, and a simple `git diff` would probably be more useful. If you want better syntax highlighting you could setup bat[0] as your difftool. If you insist on a side-by-side view (neo)vim has a diff mode with the -d flag. It is also possible to setup as the difftool that git uses. [0]: https://github.com/sharkdp/bat 50. Heh, many years ago I actually started writing a dedicated diff viewer app for Android [0] that specifically had synchronized horizontal scrolling between the two sides, and I remember finding it relatively usable in landscape, and I’m sure modern phones with larger and higher density screens would be even better. But yeah, you definitely need a native experience to make side by side diffs viable on mobile. [0] https://github.com/scottbez1/superdiff — I wish I had recorded some videos of the app back then. My code review workflow back then eventually stopped including diff attachments on code review emails, so I abandoned development on it. 51. Programming on a phone is a tough sell for many since typing is slower and you have less screen real estate to view/debug the code. Using an AI agent and typing only prompts makes it more compelling. You input less, and only occasionally have to edit code instead of writing everything from 0. And even with editing, typing a prompt like "separate the X logic from class Y into a new file/class" is much faster on mobile than the equivalent actions. 52. Chromebook maybe but I don’t see myself using a phone unless maybe it’s voice driven. Typing up lots on phones is a pain. 53. So, we've spent ages, blood, and tears building better UIs than text, and now with AI everyone is suddenly expected to type instructions on the phone? Yes, I realize this is hard to avoid for coding in particular, but generally I'm tired of typing text on my phone. And no, I don't want to talk to it either. 54. Using this with tmux and various VPN tech. Main issue is scrolling. Termius + tmux don't scroll very well. And I've been led to believe tmux is necessary to keep sessions open when I turn off my phone screen 55. Scrolling is quite jenky with Termius - I thought there's a way to keep sessions going when there are intermittent drops in connection via Termius, but for how I've been building, when I lose connection I just restart claude and reexplain the context of the task. 56. I had this exact issue. I switched to Blink on iOS which seems inferior to Termius in every way except that scrolling tmux actually works. 57. In `~/.tmux.conf` try adding `set -g mouse on`, for mouse scrolling 58. try setting set -g mouse on in your tmux config. With this I'm able to scroll up by using two fingers in termius. 59. I have similar setup, one thing to add is map action button to a shortcut for dictate to clipboard since you can’t dictate directly into termius. 60. Could you please share more? I can't make dictation work. 61. Does this approach work for anyone? For my life, I've found that if I'm not behind the computer then I'm not in a productive situation anyway, even with AI access. I don't have a setting where I can concentrate for a long time and think clearly. For examole when watching children, doing groceries, during transit (probably have to change train in 20m, or walking to next destination). No convenient access to a notepad and pen. On a phone it's also inconvenient to do research. For me personally I've found two better uses of in-between time: 1. Micro exercises. Really important for health and longevity, especially when it's hard to find dedicated time for exercise. 2. Resting. This means no phone. Yeah hard to resist doom scrolling. Just relaxing muscles and breathing exercises, calming down the nervous system. Increases long term resillience and reduces stress. So I'm a bit puzzled. If you are in a situation where you can concentrate, why not just pull out a laptop? Typing on phone is really annoying. Even complex conversations with AI I prefer doing on a laptop. Perhaps there are coding tasks where the prompt is not too complex and it's more about writing code. But you still have to review the result. That's even more annoying on a phone than writing text. 62. Yeah, even if I'm on a plane or a train I probably wouldn't pull out my laptop. Lack of space, vibrations etc. even though I can do a lot of work offline if the internet is spotty. It's just not enjoyable. I prefer to read or chill out. I kind of envy people who are like oh yeah I coded the feature on the flight... I can't really get in the zone in that environment. Saying that, I assumed this post was a joke. ssh to a work machine or a personal machine through a VPN is not new, even if you happen to run claude code in that terminal. I'm interested in these "micro exercises". 63. I was coding a lot many years ago with a Nokia N900. The loss of the physical keyboard ruined everything for me. I really need the sense of touch. 64. Similarly I used to write Python on my Motorola Droid with the slide-out keyboard. But my touchscreen typing style these days relies heavily on auto-correct and trying to enter code is a real exercise in frustration. 65. Replit is $25 a month but the best mobile allinone coding I have tried so far easy to push to host etc and you can kick off a stage then just pickup building where you left off anytime the termius/tmux/tailscale is fine but lot more effort even after you reach the command line. Horses for courses. 66. Claude not needed to "code from anywhere you are" and certainly not from your phone. no LLM needed. no agents. Tailscale or any other VPN not needed use a laptop. (trying to do it with only a phone-factor UI is madness.) have a mobile-friendly ISP if desired or needed. solved. been solved for decades so much of the AI BS hyping is about inventing supposedly unsolved problems. like Google showing me ads to convince me to use Gemini to write a README. no thanks, kids, have been able to do that for many decades using only my brain, eyes, fingers and vi/vim 67. How do I use a laptop while standing on a train each day? It sounds like a laptop is sufficient for you, but I suspect (based on myself and other responses in this thread) that a laptop is not always viable for many people; this tutorial appears targeted toward those people. I’ve actually considered a neck/shoulder support for a laptop in the past but decided against it because it’d be cumbersome and make me a theft target. As for AI, personally speaking I use AI coding tools to allow me to continue enjoying some hobby side projects with less free time available with a kid. It’s been a massive boost to my happiness in a generally low stakes area. I’m curious to see if I can get a similar unlock on my short and interrupted commute times as well, which is why I (personally) find this article interesting. 68. dont try to code while standing on a train. one of many antpatterns a wise engineer should learn to avoid, as part of polishing our craft. also: dont juggle chainsaws, etc ;-) 69. Not coding on a laptop is actually good advice?! My argument would be that you shouldn't be doing any work without plugging your laptop into a full size keyboard and mouse at least. And, ideally, at least one external display of some form (I recommend 2 or 3, but it depends on exact setup/total resolution/etc.). But it's your body, not mine. Regarding terminals, how often does this requirement occur in practice? Assuming it does, you can probably use your laptop for it, in which case, see above. </comments_about_topic> Write a concise, engaging paragraph (3-5 sentences) summarizing the key points and perspectives in these comments about the topic. Focus on the most interesting viewpoints. Do not use bullet points—write flowing prose.
Mobile Ergonomics and Friction # A major theme is the physical difficulty of coding on a smartphone. Commenters discuss the pain of typing on touchscreens, the inability to view side-by-side diffs effectively on small screens, and the general clumsiness of managing terminal windows without a physical keyboard. Many users argue that while the setup is technically possible, the lack of screen real estate and input precision makes it impractical for serious engineering work.
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