Remote Control

Read and answer your agents from a phone or an iPad.

Your phone becomes a second client of the same runtime. It speaks the same protocol as the workbench; only the transport differs. Everything you can do on the phone you can do on the Mac. The reverse is not true: the Mac is still where the work happens.

The page lives at remote.amkumo.com. There is no app to install.

How it reaches your Mac

Your Mac dials out to a relay and stays connected; your phone connects to the same relay; the relay puts the two together. The runtime never listens on a port. There is no router to configure, no VPN, and nothing to open at the office.

The relay carries ciphertext (AES-256-GCM) it cannot read. The key lives in the fragment of the pairing link, the part after #, and browsers never send a fragment to a server. So the service that hands your phone the page is the same service that cannot decrypt what passes through it. All it ever sees is a room id.

Pairing

Press the phone icon in the right rail, above Settings. It is not in Settings, because pairing is something you do, not a preference you set.

The panel always shows a code to scan. Point your phone’s camera at it and you are linked. The moment a code is used it is spent, and the panel shows a new one, so pairing a second phone needs no button. Closing the panel takes back a code nobody used.

One key per phone. That is what makes Unpair real: deleting that one key means that one phone cannot decrypt another frame, and its notifications stop too. Every other phone is unaffected. Each phone reports what it is when it connects (iPhone · Safari and the like, because browsers cannot read the real device name), and the list shows when it was last seen.

Up to two phones can be paired. With two, the panel says Two phones is the limit. Unpair one to add another. instead of a code.

If a phone loses its pairing (a cleared browser, or a Home Screen app that did not inherit Safari’s storage), the page has a box to paste the whole link into.

Keeping the Mac awake

While a phone is paired, Kumo keeps the Mac from idling into sleep, so locking the screen or letting the display turn off does not drop the link. The panel warns that this drains the battery faster when unplugged, and Kumo lets go as soon as Remote Control is off.

Closing the lid still puts the Mac to sleep. macOS only lets that be changed with administrator rights, so Kumo leaves it to you:

sudo pmset -a disablesleep 1   # the lid no longer puts the Mac to sleep
sudo pmset -a disablesleep 0   # back to normal

This applies on battery too. A Mac closed into a bag with it on stays awake, runs warm and drains the battery, so turn it back off when you are done. With a display, keyboard and power attached, macOS already stays awake with the lid closed and you need neither.

What you can do there

The page is the workbench, laid out for the screen it is on: one column on a phone, list and detail side by side on an iPad or a phone held sideways, and a docked sidebar on a laptop. The menu (☰) is the Mac’s left column: Agents, Tasks, Agentflows, the project tree, and Settings.

• Agents: the same global list, order and status words as the Mac, filtered by All, Needs you or Running. Notifications land here. + starts a new agent, including resuming a session.
• An agent: read the conversation, send a prompt (with @ for files and agents, @new:, / commands and photos), answer a question or a permission request, stop a turn, change model, effort or mode, see related agents. Tap a file path and the file opens, read off the Mac’s disk.
• A Workspace: its agents, its diffs (read-only) and its files.
• Tasks: the list, the detail and the actions, as on the Mac.
• Agentflows: put a flow online or offline, follow a run as a list of steps, approve or reject, cancel a run, and read what each node said.

Fold the sidebar or the list away to give a conversation, a file or a diff the whole width; it is remembered per device. Back is your browser’s Back.

Not on the phone: the terminal, committing and pushing, importing a project, editing a flow, and deleting a Workspace. The destructive one stays on the Mac.

Notifications

Add the page to your Home Screen first. iOS only allows notifications for a Home Screen app; in a Safari tab it will not even ask.

The rule for pushing is the same as for notifications on the Mac: if the runtime posted a Mac notification, it pushes one too. So the tab you are looking at does not push, and a kind you turned off in Settings → General does not push. One decision, two outputs, so they can never disagree.

The text is one of two fixed sentences: An agent needs you or An agent finished. The Mac sends the relay a single letter, and the relay picks the sentence. It never sees a name, a project or a word of content.

Connected or not

The header says Linked, Connecting… or Offline, and Linked means something came back, not that a socket is open. A relay can vanish without saying so, and both ends would otherwise sit there looking healthy and receiving nothing. So the Mac asks every 20 seconds and expects an answer, and the phone gives every request 15 seconds. Better to say Offline than to look connected and be deaf.

After the beta

Remote Control is part of Kumo Personal from 1 November 2026. Until then it works with no account at all. After that, the relay checks your plan when the Mac connects. Without Personal, the Mac’s panel and your phones say Subscription ended instead of trying to connect, and they pick up again by themselves once the plan is back. See Settings, keys & plans.