Mobile and Remote Control

Claude Code doesn’t need you sitting at your desk to keep moving. There are two distinct ways to work with it away from your machine, and they solve different problems — worth keeping straight before you reach for either.

Mobile dispatch

The mobile app lets you kick off a coding task from your phone. It runs as a cloud session — not on your laptop — so you don’t need a terminal open, or even your computer turned on. You check on it later from mobile, browser, or desktop, whichever’s in front of you.

The flow has three parts:

1. Start anywhere — no terminal needed, just the mobile app and a prompt.
2. Monitor progress — check in on what it’s doing and review output as it comes in.
3. Continue seamlessly — once you’re back at your desk, pick the session back up like you never left.

Remote Control

Remote Control is a different thing: it connects an already-running local session to another device. You run /remote-control inside a session that’s already active on your machine, and from that point you can steer it or approve its permission prompts from your phone.

The key word is “already-running” — Remote Control doesn’t start anything new. It hands you a remote steering wheel for a session that exists on your machine right now.

The key distinction

Remote Control — your machine

• Takes over an existing local CLI session from your phone or another device
• Work runs on your machine, your environment, your files
• Great for steering something already running, or approving a permission prompt while away from your desk

Dispatch — the cloud

• Starts a brand-new task in a cloud environment tied to your repo
• Runs independently of your computer — which can even be off
• Great for kicking off a fresh, self-contained task while on the go

Rule of thumb

Continuing or steering something already running locally → Remote Control. Starting something new that should run without your machine being on → Dispatch.

Check yourselfYou're mid-commute and remember a permission prompt is probably waiting on your desktop session. Remote Control or Dispatch?

Remote Control. The session is already running on your desktop machine — you’re not starting anything new, you’re steering and approving something that exists there right now. Dispatch would start a brand-new cloud task instead, which doesn’t help you unblock the session waiting at your desk.