My Phone Is a Dev Environment. Here's How.
Termux, a Cloudflare tunnel, tmux, and Claude CLI. How I turned an Android phone into a real development environment connected to my home server.
A routine checkup came back with numbers my doctor didn't like.
Nothing dramatic — but enough for her to say "you need to move more" in that tone doctors use when they mean it. The problem was obvious: going to the gym meant time away from my computer, and time away from my computer meant I wasn't building things.
I needed a reason to leave the house. So I gave myself one: what if I could still code outside?
The Problem
I like computers. That's not a personality trait I'm working on fixing - it's the reason I rejected a Lead Engineer promotion. Too many meetings. Not enough machines.
But health markers don't care about your commit history. The doctor was clear: move more, or deal with the consequences.
The gym was the obvious answer. The obvious problem was that I'd rather be SSH'd into my server than staring at a squat rack.
So I thought: what if I didn't have to choose?
The Stack
Termux + cloudflared + tmux + Claude CLI
The setup is simpler than it sounds:
- Termux on Android — a real Linux terminal on my phone
- cloudflared — Cloudflare Tunnel connecting to my home server (HYDRA09)
- tmux — persistent sessions that survive disconnects
- Claude CLI — agentic coding that turns natural language into commits
The hardest part was the initial SSH config. Typing aliases and host configurations on a phone keyboard with two thumbs is exactly as painful as it sounds. Once that was done, everything else was straightforward.
I open Termux, tunnel into my server, attach to a tmux session, and I'm in the same environment as my desktop. Same files. Same tools. Same git repos. If my phone loses signal or I lock the screen, the session keeps running — I just reattach when I'm back.
The key insight: Claude CLI changes everything about phone coding. Without it, writing code on a 6-inch screen is impractical. You're fighting the keyboard on every semicolon. But with agentic coding, I don't type code anymore. I describe what I want, review what comes back, and approve or adjust. My brain provides the context. The AI provides the keystrokes.
Between sets at the gym, I'll pull up a task, describe the fix or feature, review the diff, and commit. A rest period is 60–90 seconds. That's enough for a focused interaction.
WhatsApp + Vargos + Home Server
Termux worked. But it still required me to open a terminal and think in commands.
Vargos filled a different gap: what if my infrastructure could come to me?
Vargos is my self-hosted AI agent, running 24/7 on HYDRA09 with a local LLM. I built it after INGRA failed. It has webhook and cron integrations - so it can ping me on WhatsApp when something needs attention, not the other way around.
The flow: I message Vargos on WhatsApp. It executes tasks on my server. Multi-step things I'd otherwise need to SSH in for — Vargos handles autonomously and reports back.
The difference between the two stacks:
- Termux is for when I want hands-on control - reviewing code, making decisions, shipping PRs
- Vargos is for when I want to delegate - "run this", "check that", "deploy the thing"
One is a remote terminal. The other is a remote employee.
What Actually Changed
I've been doing this since February 2025. A year in:
- I go to the gym 3–5 times a week. Consistently.
- The numbers that worried my doctor are back to normal
- I've shipped PRs - real production code, for work and personal projects - from my phone
The trick wasn't discipline. It was removing the thing that made the gym feel like a sacrifice. If I can still build things between sets, going outside stops being a tradeoff.
What You'd Get Wrong
If you want to replicate this, here's what matters:
You need your own server. This only works because I have real infrastructure at home to tunnel into. A phone is the interface - the compute happens on a Ryzen 9 with 192GB of RAM.
AI is what makes phone dev practical. Before agentic coding, phone development was a novelty. You could maybe edit a config file or read logs. Now you can describe features in plain English and review the output. The keyboard stops being the bottleneck.
The initial setup is the painful part. SSH config, cloudflared auth, Termux packages - all typed with your thumbs. After that, it's smooth.
The Actual Point
This isn't about phones being the future of development. My desktop is still my primary environment.
It's about removing the excuse. I didn't want to go to the gym because it meant not being at my computer. So I made my computer fit in my pocket.
A year later, I'm healthier and still shipping code.
Sometimes the best infrastructure investment isn't a faster GPU. It's the one that gets you out of your chair.