Catnip
Run Claude Code from Your iPhone Using GitHub Codespaces
Details
- External ID
- 46544142
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- Catnip
- Website domain
- github.com
- Launched
- Jan. 8, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 9
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.461133069828722
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
Description
Hi HN — I built Catnip, an open-source iOS app that lets you run Claude Code against a real development environment from your phone.Under the hood it spins up a GitHub Codespace, installs Claude Code, and connects the iOS client to it securely. You can use a full terminal when needed, or a lightweight native UI for monitoring and interaction.I built this because Claude Code is most useful when it has access to a persistent environment with plugins, tools, and real repos — and I wanted that flexibility away from my laptop.GitHub gives personal users 120 free Codespaces hours/month, and Catnip automatically shuts down inactive instances.Open source: https://github.com/wandb/catnip App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/w-b-catnip/id6755161660Happy to answer questions or hear feedback.
Enrichment
- Theme
- utilities for Claude and Claude Code
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Dev tools
- Audience
- Developer
- AI stance
- AI feature
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- run claude code from iphone via github codespaces
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
Yes The app orchestrates GitHub Codespaces via the standard GitHub REST/GraphQL API and connects to the instance over SSH/WebSocket to render a mobile terminal UI.
Discussion
6 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: VS Code remote into codespaces, Docker container setup
Concerns raised: iPad version on Mac not ideal experience, Complexity of moving sessions between machines with git state and uncommitted changes, Auto-shutdown on idle behavior unclear across platforms
Feature requests: Teleport command to move sessions between machines (phone to Mac), Push notifications when Claude Code waits for permission/user input, Native Mac OS desktop version, Continue sessions from local Claude Code to Codespaces
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 259 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #151 of 260 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 54 days after the earliest competitor.
- GitHub · ph · 2026-09-30 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- Computer Use in Claude Code · ph · 2026-03-31 · 442 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- kiln.bot · hn · 2026-02-03 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- meepo · ph · 2026-09-28 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- Gamekit-CLI · hn · 2026-01-23 · 13 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- Scape · hn · 2026-03-05 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- Fermata · ph · 2026-09-30 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- 1Code · hn · 2026-01-15 · 75 upvotes · similarity 0.45
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
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