Pocketty is an SSH terminal for iPhone and iPad, built for herdr, a tool that keeps agent panes alive on your computer and tracks whether each one is working, needs you, or is done. The developer created it during a recent paternity leave, when they wanted to stay productive away from their desk. They have used it for the past couple of months and say they no longer have to sit at their desk to be productive.
The app connects directly to your computer over plain SSH. Tailscale is the easiest way to reach your machine from anywhere, but any reachable SSH host works. A small Rust daemon on the host watches herdr. When a pane needs attention, the daemon seals the alert to your phone's key using HPKE encryption. A stateless relay on Cloudflare Workers passes the sealed bytes to Apple Push Notification servers, and a notification extension opens them on the phone. The relay cannot read the alerts and stores nothing. Your SSH key is generated in the Secure Enclave and cannot be exported.
The terminal renders full-screen terminal interfaces much as they appear on your desk. It also offers diffs for each agent turn, a file browser, and previews of localhost dev servers your agent starts, all through the same SSH connection. herdr and the daemon are optional; without them, Pocketty works as a normal SSH client.
There is no account setup and no analytics or tracking. The app includes a 14-day free trial with full features. After that, it is a one-time purchase: $99 during the launch promotion for the first two weeks, then $129.
Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing