An actual terminal on my phone
The best part is that I can run a terminal right from my phone. Forget a Linux computer — every other setup was just a terminal emulator. With Omalauncher, this is an actual terminal.
And it is much more powerful. I can run agents directly, and it is sandboxed: it runs inside a proot container that cannot access the files on my phone. The proot setup in this repository exists precisely because I make changes and push commits directly from my phone. It feels like running a dual-boot system — my standard phone OS alongside an OS that actually works for me. I do not use the other features of the OS. There are probably many, but I only care about agentic access through the terminal.
I can use opencode and Muse Spark 1.3, which is free right now. That enables me to write and do so much. All the blog posts I have written over the last couple of days were written using this setup. It is liberating to actually use a computer on the go.
I have tried setups like OpenClaw before, but they require subscriptions. The moment I connect over the network — where my Mac runs an OpenClaw server and I access it from my phone — I have to provide an AI subscription. If I run the computer directly on my phone, there are no two machines to connect. Using opencode with Muse Spark 1.3 for free saves money, and there is no need to worry about Tailscale or connecting systems over a VPN. Fewer variables, less stress, fewer problems.
Right now I can just run an agentic setup on my phone and work with things in the cloud, like GitHub repositories. It is simply more fun.
A phone screen is not large enough to get things done as fast as on a desk setup, where more screen real estate lets you see more. That is why I have a multi-monitor desk setup at home (I will write a separate piece in the future about my desk setup).
Even on a smaller screen, having this on the go is still helpful. It enables me to invoke an agent anywhere to find things and update things.
I personally believe that this is the future of software: custom software built for custom, ultra-niche use cases, which I wrote about in The Death Of Software Or The Rise Of Ultra Niche Software and Building Custom Software With Ai. The future is probably where agents are running all the time for everyone. It is a weird world out there, and nobody knows for sure what will happen, but it definitely sounds like fun.
Reference: SimonSchubert/omalauncher on GitHub.