What is shellin?

shellin is a lightweight tool that lets you view and interact with your desktop terminal from an iPhone or iPad. You run the CLI on your machine, open the iOS app, and your shell appears — live, over an encrypted peer-to-peer connection.

Running AI coding agents like Claude Code, Gemini CLI, OpenCode, or Codex on your desktop? shellin lets you monitor and interact with them from anywhere — check progress, approve actions, or type commands, all from your phone.

Zero configuration

No port forwarding. No SSH config. No static IP. No firewall rules. No router settings. shellin handles the connection for you — encrypted, peer-to-peer, out of the box.

How does it work?

When you run shellin, the CLI opens a local PTY (pseudo-terminal) and registers itself with the shellin server. The iOS app discovers your session and initiates a WebRTC negotiation through the server.

Once the peer-to-peer connection is established, all terminal I/O flows directly between your machine and your device — the server is no longer in the path. Keystrokes go in one DataChannel, terminal output comes back through another.

Session flow

Security

All traffic is encrypted end-to-end via DTLS — the standard security layer built into WebRTC. The server handles authentication and session coordination but never sees your terminal data. Authentication uses short-lived JWT tokens tied to your subscription.