Steer a running session from your phone with Remote Control

A long task started at your desk does not stop needing you when you leave it. It hits a permission prompt, or finishes and waits for the next instruction. Remote Control connects claude.ai/code or the Claude mobile app to a Claude Code session running on your own machine, so you can answer from another device. This is a concept and reference lesson sourced from the Claude Code documentation and the local claude --help (version 2.1.310), checked 2026-10-25. It describes documented behavior; it is not a captured run.

What it is, and what it is not

The session keeps running locally the whole time. Code execution, your filesystem, local MCP servers, and project configuration all stay on your machine; the web and mobile interfaces are a window onto that process. Two consequences follow from the docs: the computer has to stay on with the claude process running, and the conversation, subagent progress, and dynamic workflow progress stay in sync across every connected device (Remote Control docs).

A cloud session is a different thing that uses the same claude.ai/code interface. It runs on Anthropic-managed infrastructure (or your organization’s self-hosted environment), needs no local setup, and works on a repository you have not cloned. From the CLI, claude --cloud "<description>" creates a cloud session or attaches to one by ID or URL, and claude --teleport resumes a cloud (“teleport”) session in your terminal. The deciding question is where the files live: Remote Control for work already in progress on your machine, a cloud session for work that should not depend on it.

Start one

Three CLI forms, each from the docs:

claude remote-control          # server mode: waits for connections, can host several sessions
claude --remote-control        # a normal interactive session that is also reachable remotely (alias --rc)

/remote-control                # from inside a session; carries the current conversation over (alias /rc)

Server mode prints a session URL and shows a QR code when you press the spacebar. The first time, Claude Code explains what Remote Control does and asks for confirmation. Flags worth knowing on claude remote-control:

• --spawn worktree gives each on-demand session its own git worktree, because the default same-dir mode shares the working directory and can conflict.
• --capacity <N> caps concurrent sessions (default 32).
• --permission-mode <mode> sets the starting permission mode for the server’s sessions.
• -c or --continue reattaches to the session the last server recorded for this directory, and errors if nothing was recorded within roughly the last four hours.

The VS Code extension and the Desktop app use /remote-control too.

Requirements that trip people up

From the docs’ requirements list:

• A claude.ai login on Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise. API keys are not supported. On Team and Enterprise an Owner must first enable a toggle in Claude Code admin settings.
• Not available on Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud’s Agent Platform, or Microsoft Foundry, and not with ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL pointing at a gateway or proxy host.
• Not available if CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_NONESSENTIAL_TRAFFIC or DISABLE_GROWTHBOOK is set.
• Organizations can require Trusted Devices, which the docs label beta.

The first three items matter for corporate setups: API-key auth, an LLM gateway set through ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL, or CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_NONESSENTIAL_TRAFFIC each rules Remote Control out.

Control: what a remote device can and cannot do

Permission prompts and AskUserQuestion questions stay open until someone answers, on any connected device. Some commands are terminal-only: /plugin and /resume work only from the local CLI, while text-output commands such as /compact, /context, /usage, and /clear work from mobile and web. Commands such as /model, /effort, and /advisor take their value as an argument there instead of showing a picker. Treat the connected phone as having the same authority over the session as your keyboard, which is the reason for the Trusted Devices option on managed accounts.

Mobile push notifications are a documented companion feature, so the session can tell you when it needs input rather than waiting for you to look.

Where it sits among the other options

The docs compare Remote Control with Dispatch (message a task from the mobile app to Desktop), Channels (push events from a chat app into a CLI session), Slack, self-hosted environments, and scheduled tasks. The short version for this track: Remote Control steers work already running on your machine; scheduled tasks start new runs on a clock; agent view lets you watch and answer many local background sessions from one terminal screen.