You Don't Have to Sit at Your Desk to Keep Your Claude Code Session Running
Claude Code's Remote Control feature lets you keep your local dev session alive and accessible from your phone or browser, without moving a single file to the cloud.
Most AI coding tools make you choose: work locally with full control, or go mobile and lose it all. Your MCP servers, internal tooling, custom configs? Gone the moment you step away from your machine.
Claude Code's Remote Control feature skips that tradeoff entirely.
You can start a session at your desk, walk out the door, and keep going from your phone or browser. Your full local environment keeps running the show.
Here's how it actually works.
What is Remote Control?
Remote Control connects your locally running Claude Code session to claude.ai/code or the Claude mobile app. Your browser or phone becomes a window into that session.
What it is not is a cloud migration. Your filesystem, MCP servers, tools, and project config stay exactly where they are, on your machine. Nothing gets uploaded. Nothing moves.
This matters more than it might sound.
When your dev environment depends on internal services, local scripts, or specific tooling that doesn't exist in the cloud, most "remote" solutions just break. Remote Control doesn't, because it's not actually running remotely. Your machine is still doing the work.
Remote Control is currently available as a research preview on Pro and Max plans only. Team and Enterprise plans aren't included yet.
Why Engineers Actually Care About This
1.Your Local Environment Stays Intact
Every dependency your project has, local MCP servers, custom scripts, internal APIs, specific dev tooling, keeps working exactly as it did. You're not giving any of that up for mobility.
2.Your Session Follows You Across Devices
Start a task at your desk. Review it from your tablet on the couch. Send a follow-up instruction from your phone. Everything stays in sync. No re-explaining context, no starting over.
3.It Survives Interruptions
If your laptop sleeps or your network hiccups, the session reconnects automatically when your machine comes back online. Short outages don't kill your context. Extended outages (roughly 10+ minutes) will end the session, but restarting is just one command.
How to Start a Remote Control Session
Starting fresh from your project directory:
claude remote-control
That command keeps Claude Code running locally, generates a session URL, and waits for you to connect from another device. Press spacebar to show a QR code if you want to connect from your phone quickly.
Useful flags to know:
-
--verbosegives you detailed logs -
--sandboxor--no-sandboxcontrols filesystem and network isolation
Continuing an existing session:
If you're already inside Claude Code and want to go remote without losing your conversation history, just run:
/remote-control
This carries over everything you've already done and gives you a session URL and QR code to connect from wherever you are.
Pro tip: Run /rename before starting Remote Control so your session has a clear label when it shows up in claude.ai/code. Small thing, big quality of life.
Connecting from Another Device
Once the session is active, you have a few ways to connect:
- Open the session URL in any browser
- Scan the QR code in the Claude mobile app
- Find the session listed in
claude.ai/code
Active remote sessions show a computer icon with a green status dot. Each Claude Code instance supports one remote session at a time. Close the terminal, and the session ends.
What About Security?
This is usually where developers get skeptical, so let's be direct.
Remote Control doesn't open any inbound ports on your machine. Your session makes outbound HTTPS requests only. All traffic goes over TLS. Credentials are short-lived and scoped to specific purposes. The server routes messages between your devices over a streaming connection.
Your local files don't get uploaded anywhere just because Remote Control is running. The cloud infrastructure acts as a relay, not a host.
Is it zero-risk? Nothing is. But the architecture is designed to keep your code and environment exactly where they belong: local.
Remote Control vs Claude Code on the Web
Both use the same claude.ai/code interface, which can make them look identical. The difference is where execution actually happens.
1.Remote Control runs on your local machine. You get full access to your files, MCP servers, and local configs. This is the right choice when you're in the middle of active local development and want to keep going from another device.
2.Claude Code on the Web runs on Anthropic-managed cloud infrastructure. There's no access to your local filesystem. That's fine when you're spinning up something new without any local dependencies, or when you want to run parallel tasks without tying up your machine.
The honest summary: Remote Control is for continuity. Web is for convenience. Pick based on what your workflow actually needs.
Limitations Worth Knowing Before You Rely on It
- One remote session per Claude Code instance. If you want two sessions, you need two instances.
- Your terminal has to stay open. The process dies if you close it.
- Sessions end after roughly 10+ minutes of network outage. Restart with
claude remote-controland you're back.
None of these are dealbreakers. Just know them ahead of time.
When Should You Actually Use This?
Remote Control earns its keep when:
- You're deep into local development and don't want to stop or restart
- Your project depends on local MCP servers, internal tooling, or configs that can't move to the cloud
- You want to check in on a long-running task from your phone without staying at your desk
- Keeping execution local is a hard requirement, whether for security, compliance, or just preference
If your workflows are cloud-native and you don't have local dependencies to worry about, the web version is probably sufficient. But for engineering teams building on local infrastructure or using Claude Code in any serious, production-adjacent capacity, this feature is worth understanding well.
The Bottom Line
Remote Control is a practical answer to a real problem. Local development setups are powerful precisely because they're customized, connected, and controlled. Remote Control lets you keep all of that while still working from wherever you actually are.
If you're building AI-native development workflows, evaluating multi-device coding setups, or thinking through how to get more from Claude Code without compromising on how your team actually works, we're happy to talk through what that looks like in practice.
Follow MeisterIT Systems for more on AI-driven development, engineering tooling, and building systems that actually hold up at scale.
Have questions about Claude Code in your stack? Drop them in the comments or reach out directly.
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