Introduction

Melta is a phone app for the coding agents running on your own computer. This page covers what it does, what you need before you start, and where its limits are.

What Melta does

Melta connects from your phone straight to your computer over SSH and talks to Herdr, the terminal multiplexer your agents run in. SSH runs on the phone. There is no relay server and no hosted machine.

• Every pane, with live status. Your Herdr workspaces, tabs and panes, with each agent marked as working, needing input or done. See Host screen.
• Jump To. One searchable list of the panes on every connected computer, with what needs you at the top. See Jump To and last pane.
• Chat for Claude Code and Codex. The agent's own session log shown as a conversation, with Allow and Deny when it asks permission. See Agent chat.
• A real terminal for every pane. Full screen, with your Herdr prefix key and a key bar you can rearrange. See Terminal.
• Notifications. A push when an agent is blocked or finishes, sent by a small Herdr plugin on your computer. See Notifications.

Melta is free, for iPhone and Android. Join the waitlist and the download links arrive by email when your spot opens up.

What you need

• A phone running iOS or Android.
• A computer running macOS or Linux. A Windows PC works through WSL (Ubuntu); see Windows.
• Herdr on that computer. The setup command installs it, or updates it if you already have it.
• SSH turned on. On a Mac that is Remote Login in System Settings › General › Sharing. On Linux, the OpenSSH server.
• A way for the phone to reach the computer. Melta recommends Tailscale, which works from any network. Any address you can already reach over SSH also works.
• A Melta account. Sign in with Apple (on iPhone), with Google, or with an email and a password of at least 8 characters.

For the chat view, Herdr needs its agent integrations installed so it can report each agent's session: herdr integration install claude and herdr integration install codex. Melta also uses nc (with -U support) or python3 on the computer to follow Herdr's live events.

What Melta does not do

• No Mosh. Melta uses plain SSH. It relies on Herdr to keep your sessions alive and reconnects when the connection drops.
• It cannot wake a sleeping computer. A sleeping computer is off the network. Keep it awake while you are away; see how to keep a Mac awake for SSH.
• It does not host anything. Your agents run on your computer, with your own Claude Code or Codex login.
• It is not a general SSH client. Melta is built around Herdr. On a server without Herdr there are no panes to show.

Next step

Continue with Add a computer.