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Lakshmi Sravya Vedantham
Lakshmi Sravya Vedantham

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I Built a Tool to Control AI Coding Agents from My Phone

#ai #productivity #opensource #rust

The Problem

You're on the couch, in a coffee shop, or just away from your desk. You have a list of coding tasks you want done. You have AI coding agents (Claude Code, Aider, Codex, Gemini CLI) installed on your machine. But you can't use them from your phone.

What if you could just text your tasks from Discord and have multiple AI agents start working on them — each in its own terminal?

What I Built

Agentboard — an open-source tool that lets you orchestrate multiple AI coding agents from your phone via Discord.

You type:

team Alpha: Build a landing page for my portfolio
team Beta: Fix the auth bug in my API
team Gamma: Write tests for the payment module
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And on your Mac, three Terminal windows open — each running Claude (or Aider, Codex, Gemini, whatever you configure) working on its assigned task. In parallel.

How It Works 

You (Discord on phone)
    |
    v
Discord Bot (Python, runs on your machine)
    |
    +-- Team Alpha -> Terminal.app -> claude "Build landing page..."
    +-- Team Beta  -> Terminal.app -> claude "Fix auth bug..."
    +-- Team Gamma -> Terminal.app -> claude "Write tests..."
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  1. You send a message in Discord with team Name: task
  2. The bot parses your message
  3. Opens a real Terminal window per team
  4. Runs your AI coding CLI interactively
  5. Each team works independently, in parallel

No API credits needed for the bot itself — it uses your existing Claude Code subscription (or whatever CLI you have installed).

The Pluggable Backend

Agentboard isn't locked to one AI tool. It works with any CLI:

Backend Command
Claude Code claude "task"
Aider aider --message "task"
Codex CLI codex "task"
Gemini CLI gemini "task"
Goose goose run "task"
Any CLI Configure in agentboard.toml

Quick Start 

# Clone
git clone https://github.com/LakshmiSravyaVedantham/agentboard
cd agentboard/discord-bot

# Setup
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Add your Discord bot token to .env
echo 'DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN=your-token' > ../.env

# Run
python bot.py
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Then in Discord:

team Alpha: Build a hello world Python script
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A Terminal window opens on your Mac with Claude working on it.

Setting Up the Discord Bot (2 minutes)

  1. Go to Discord Developer Portal
  2. New Application -> name it "Agentboard"
  3. Bot tab -> Reset Token -> copy it
  4. Enable Message Content Intent
  5. OAuth2 -> URL Generator -> scope: bot -> permissions: Send Messages, Manage Channels, Read Message History
  6. Open the generated URL -> add bot to your server

What's Under the Hood

Agentboard also includes a full Rust backend (for those who want it):

  • 17 unit tests covering config, auth, team state machine, backend registry, orchestrator
  • Axum server with 12 API endpoints + WebSocket
  • Svelte PWA with dark glassmorphism UI (pairing screen, team dashboard, live terminal output)
  • JWT auth with 6-digit pairing codes
  • Pluggable backends via TOML config
  • Graceful shutdown — SIGTERM to all child processes

The Rust server compiles to a single 7.2MB binary with the frontend embedded via rust-embed.

But honestly? The Discord bot is the killer feature. It's 150 lines of Python and it just works.

Commands

You type What happens
team Alpha: Build a landing page Opens Terminal with Claude working on it
team Alpha: Fix auth in ~/myproject Opens Terminal in that directory
status Shows all active teams
kill Alpha Kills a team
help Shows all commands

Pick Your Terminal

When you send a task, the bot asks which AI coding tool to use:

Which terminal should I use?
1️⃣ Claude
2️⃣ Codex
3️⃣ Aider
4️⃣ Gemini
5️⃣ Goose
6️⃣ OpenCode
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React with a number. Each team can use a different tool if you want.

Split Panes + Named Sessions

Multiple teams open as split panes in the same Terminal window — not separate windows cluttering your desktop. Each Claude session gets a named session (visible in the title bar and /resume), so you always know which team is which.

Discord Channels Per Team

Each team gets its own Discord channel (#team-alpha, #team-beta). Output streams into the channel in real-time, so you can monitor progress from your phone without switching windows.

Why Discord?

I tried building a PWA first. It worked, but:

  • Localhost firewall issues on phones
  • Safari blocks Web Speech API without HTTPS
  • Another app to maintain

Discord just works. It's on your phone, it handles notifications, and your data stays in your private server. The bot is 150 lines of Python with zero infrastructure cost.

What I Learned

  1. Claude Code's --print flag uses API credits, not your subscription. The interactive claude command uses your subscription. Big difference when you're spawning multiple agents.

  2. Multiple Discord bots can pile up. When developing, always pkill -9 -f bot.py before starting a new instance. I had 6 zombie bots responding to the same messages.

  3. The simplest approach wins. I designed an elaborate Rust+Svelte+WebSocket+JWT system. The Discord bot that actually ships is 150 lines of Python that opens Terminal windows. Ship the simple thing.

Try It

Repo: github.com/LakshmiSravyaVedantham/agentboard

Star it if you find it useful. PRs welcome — especially for Linux/Windows terminal support.

Agentboard is open source (MIT). No telemetry, no cloud, no data leaves your machine.

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