claude code without a laptop
I build Yado, a mobile app that runs Claude Code sessions in the cloud — so nothing of yours has to be running. No laptop, no VPS, no server. This page is the honest version of how that works, what it costs, and when you’d be better off with something else.
why I built it
My time in front of a laptop is scarce. I’m married, father of one (soon two), and I’m building apps solo while competing with funded startups — speed is my only edge. I had a choice: give up on my dreams, or sacrifice my family time. So I built the thing that means I don’t have to give up either.
Before Yado I lived the DIY version: Termius plus a self-deployed Ubuntu box I’d SSH into from my phone. It worked, barely — a pain, terminal only, missing plenty of features. I chose that painful setup for months to protect my evenings. Yado is the thing I actually wanted.
You know how people pick up their phone to reply to a text message during a family event? I send a quick prompt instead, usually just approving a plan my skill came up with, then lock my phone and pick it up an hour later.
how it works
- Sign in with GitHub. Yado starts a cloud container for you — a real Linux box with your repos cloned into it.
- Sign in with Claude once. It’s your subscription: Anthropic bills your tokens, I don’t. Claude Code runs on the box, not through an API key.
- Work in a chat UI built for the phone, or open a full-blown terminal — the real Claude Code CLI, same session, switch mid-run.
- It keeps going when you lock your phone. A push finds you when it’s shipped.
- Preview your changes live — the app you just built opens running on your phone.
- Connect MCPs in two taps — Sentry, Linear, Notion — and Claude uses them mid-task.
what it costs
$19/month, or $113.99/year — half price. One plan, everything in it: chat and terminal (both full), two parallel sessions, unlimited prompts, live preview, push, MCP, voice. Seven days free to start, and you bring your own Claude subscription on top.
the honest part
- Yes, it’s a wrapper around Claude Code. The value is the setup you never do and the mobile-specific work: chat mode, sessions, push, voice, live preview.
- You bring your own Claude subscription (Pro or Max) — that’s a real prerequisite.
- iPhone and Android, as of August 2026.
- Parallel sessions cap at two.
- Security, plainly: your code lives in an ephemeral per-user container while you work, and conversations are encrypted at rest — but it runs on my infrastructure, so in principle I could access it. The mitigations: containers clear out often, everything sensitive is encrypted, your Claude account stays yours (Anthropic bills you directly; I store only the login token, encrypted), and you can delete everything. Details in the privacy policy.
- Why it costs money at all, since the AI is yours: the expensive part isn’t the tokens — those ride your own Claude subscription. It’s the machine. Every user gets a real Linux box, and what actually bills is the feedback loop: dev servers, builds, browsers. You’re paying to see your work run, not to talk to a model.
- If your laptop is on anyway, a free mirror like Happy or Anthropic’s own Remote Control might be all you need. I compare the real options, dated and sourced, in 7 ways to run Claude Code from your phone.