matron

Your coding agents, anywhere

Matron is an open-source remote for Claude Code and Codex. Follow the agents on all your machines, start sessions from the sofa, answer prompts from the coffee queue — on the plan you already pay for.

Join the beta How it works iPhone and Mac · open source · TestFlight beta
Matron's chat list on iPhone: agent sessions grouped by day, each with a live summary of what the agent last did

Everything your agent does, live

Matron shows the conversation as it happens — tool calls, terminal output, and diffs stream in, so you can step away from your desk without losing the thread.

A Matron conversation open in the Mac app: a failing test card, a diff, the passing rerun, and a PR prompt
The exact same conversation open in Matron on iPhone, showing identical messages

Start at your desk. Finish on the sofa.

Every device signed into your journal shows the same conversation, live. Kick off a refactor on the desktop, then go for a walk: it’s already on your phone, still streaming.

A Matron session on iPhone: a failing npm test card, the agent's diagnosis, a code diff, the passing rerun, and a tappable 'Push the fix and open a PR?' prompt

Live sessions, faithfully rendered

Tool calls, terminal output, diffs and test runs stream in as they happen. When your agent needs a decision, the question lands as tappable options — approve, refuse, or type a reply from wherever you are.

Matron's New Chat screen: recent folders on the chosen machine, each with when it was last used, plus a free-text path and a Browser tools toggle

Start work from the sofa

New sessions start remotely on any connected machine: pick a box, pick one of its recent folders (or type a path), and go. The agent picker shows what’s online right now.

Matron's session sheet: context 97k of 200k tokens, session and weekly rate-limit bars with reset times, the model name, and a Compact button

Know where your allowance stands

Every session shows its model, context-window fill, and your session and weekly rate limits with reset times — live. Running long? Compact the conversation with one tap.

A Matron chat with a running subagent pinned at the top — 'Explore: auth call sites' with a progress spinner — above the main conversation and a code diff

Subagents get their own threads

When your agent fans out helpers, each one becomes a sub-chat you can open and follow. The parent chat pins what’s still running, so nothing finishes silently.

Matron's machine picker: two agents, homelab and mac-studio, both showing as connected

All your machines in your pocket

A VPS in the cloud, the homelab, the desktop at work — every machine running an agent shows up in one app, with live connection state. Sessions on different boxes run side by side in the same list.

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Send anything

Photos, files, and voice notes go straight into the conversation.

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Push notifications

Get pinged the moment your agent needs you or finishes the job.

Native on iPhone and Mac

Smooth, fast, and light — custom-designed native apps. Windows and Linux are covered by matron-desktop.

How it works

Matron is a remote control, not a cloud IDE. Your agents, your code, and your commands all stay on your own computers.

Your agents, on your machines

Claude Code or Codex runs on machines you control — a VPS, the desktop at home, the work laptop — in your own repos, with your own permissions, on your own subscription.

Your journal server relays

Sessions sync through a Matron journal server that you run yourself — your conversations and files go through your own box, not a third-party cloud.

Matron goes with you

The iPhone and Mac apps show every session live. Read, reply, approve, attach — from the sofa, the train, or the queue for coffee.

Before you sign in: Matron connects to a journal server and an agent that you run on your own machines. You’ll need both set up first — the app is the window, not the engine. Self-hosting is the point: we never see your code or conversations.

The ecosystem

Matron is a small family of repos that snap together. Everything is on GitHub — read it, run it, fork it.

matron-apple

The iPhone and Mac apps on this page — native SwiftUI clients that render sessions live, speak the journal protocol, and ship through TestFlight.

matron-journal

The sync server. One append-only journal per user, every device a cursor into it — a few thousand lines of Node on SQLite, three dependencies total.

matron-bridge

The agent side. Spawns and manages Claude Code and Codex sessions on your dev box, publishes them to your journal, and carries your replies back — you can even /switch a conversation between agents.

dev-boxer

One command turns a fresh Ubuntu VPS — or a spare machine at home — into a hardened, always-on agent box. More below.

matron-desktop

A lightweight desktop client for Windows and Linux — currently being updated for the new journal features.

matron-web

A lightweight browser client — chat with your agents from any machine with a URL bar.

Setting up

Three pieces: a journal server anywhere your devices can reach, a bridge on each machine that runs agents, and the apps. One box can happily run all of it. Each repo’s README has the full walkthrough — this is the shape of it.

Run the journal server

On a $5 VPS (Hetzner and OVH both work well), a box at home, or the same machine your agents run on: npm install && npm start in matron-journal, then create your user and an agent token with the bundled matron-admin CLI. Put TLS in front — a reverse proxy or a Cloudflare Tunnel both work.

Connect the bridge

On each dev machine, clone matron-bridge, point .env at your journal with the agent token, and npm start. It drives the Claude Code or Codex CLI you already have installed and signed in.

Sign in from the apps

Enter your journal URL and username in Matron on iPhone or Mac. Sessions appear the moment a bridge publishes them — and everything on this page just works.

No server yet? Meet dev-boxer

dev-boxer is the fast path to an always-on agent machine: one command on a fresh Ubuntu 24.04 box sets up the whole environment, hardened and reachable from anywhere.

dev-boxer's installer running in a terminal: the module plan, then security hardening and Claude Code setup steps completing with green check marks

One command

The installer walks you through a short wizard, then sets up Claude Code, the bridge, dev tools, Docker, and Node — eleven idempotent modules you can re-run or resume any time.

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Hardened by default

SSH key-only auth on a custom port, UFW firewall, fail2ban, unattended upgrades — locked down from the first boot.

Reachable, not exposed

Cloudflare Tunnel gives you HTTPS access with no open ports, and an optional XFCE desktop over RDP rides an SSH tunnel when you need a real GUI.

Get started: grab a fresh Ubuntu 24.04 machine — a small Hetzner or OVH VPS is the classic choice — and follow the dev-boxer README; the installer prompts for everything it needs.

Join the beta

Matron is in TestFlight beta for iPhone, with the Mac app alongside it. If you’d like an invite, get in touch and tell us a little about your setup.