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Mike Kim
Mike Kim

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I let ChatGPT on my phone work on my Mac: a remote MCP setup

#mcp #chatgpt #macos #ai

I kept asking ChatGPT to "clean up my Downloads folder" and getting a nice list of steps back. What I wanted was for it to just do it, on my Mac, even when I'm not at the desk.

So I built BCD. Disclosure up front: I'm the maker. This post walks through how the setup works, what it can and can't do, and the safety model, so you can decide if it fits.

How it works

BCD has two parts:

  1. A small agent on your Mac. It connects out to a relay over a WebSocket. Nothing listens on your network and no ports are opened.
  2. A hosted remote MCP server at https://bcd.snack-wrap.com/mcp. You add it to ChatGPT or Claude as a connector, sign in, and the AI can call tools that run on your Mac.

Because the AI app talks to the hosted server, it works from the ChatGPT or Claude app on your phone too. The Mac does the work.

Setup (about 5 minutes)

  1. Create a free account at bcd.snack-wrap.com.
  2. On the Mac, paste one line into Terminal: 
   curl -fsSL https://bcd.snack-wrap.com | bash
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Then click Approve in the browser tab it opens. The agent runs as a login service, so it reconnects after restarts and sleep. You don't keep a Terminal window open.

  1. Add the connector:
    • ChatGPT: Settings, Apps, Advanced settings, turn on Developer mode, then create an app with the address https://bcd.snack-wrap.com/mcp.
    • Claude: Settings, Connectors, Add custom connector, same address.
    • Claude Code / Codex: the installer offers to add it for you.

Things I actually use it for

These are the prompts I send most, in plain words:

  • "Sort my Downloads folder by file type and tell me what moved."
  • "Read the three meeting-notes PDFs on my Desktop and list the to-dos nobody closed."
  • "Compare September and August sales in sales.xlsx by product, without changing the file."
  • "Cut 0:20 to 0:32 of this video into a 9:16 clip with a title." (It edits on the Mac with AVFoundation, no ffmpeg needed.)
  • "Build my iOS app and upload it to TestFlight." (Handy from the phone when you're away.)

Long jobs keep running if the chat connection drops, and the AI can check the outcome of a call whose answer got lost instead of running it twice.

Safety model

Giving an AI your computer deserves some care, so the defaults are conservative:

  • A new computer starts read-only. The AI can look but not change anything.
  • Writing files, running commands, screen control and clipboard are separate switches you turn on per Mac in the dashboard.
  • File changes the AI makes can be listed and undone.
  • BCD doesn't store your file contents. When the AI reads a file, the content passes through the relay in memory to your AI app.

Limits

  • Mac only for now. Windows has a waitlist.
  • You need an AI app that supports custom connectors (ChatGPT developer mode, Claude custom connectors, Claude Code, Codex).
  • One Mac is free with no monthly tool-call quota. New accounts get the 3-Mac plan free for a month, no card.

If you try it, I'd like to hear what you wanted the AI to do on your computer and where it got stuck. Example prompts are here: bcd.snack-wrap.com/prompts.

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