Comment by granda
2 days ago
Author here! Thanks for checking it out.
On the $210/month VM cost - fair point. For me it's worth it because I'm running multiple parallel agents throughout the day, but you could definitely do this cheaper with a smaller instance or spot pricing.
The real bottleneck isn't typing on mobile - it's reviewing the output. I've found 2-3 parallel agents is my sweet spot before I can't keep up with reviewing PRs. Git worktrees help a lot here since each agent works in isolation with its own containers (including db).
And to the work-life balance concerns - totally valid. For me this isn't about working more, it's about capturing ideas when they strike (usually on walks or waiting in line). The Poke notifications let me stay async rather than glued to a terminal.
Although a little late to the HN post, happy to answer any questions about the setup!
Can you explain more about the vm-start/vm-stop? I don't understand why you start/halt the VM and wait for Tailscale, you could just keep it running.
I start/stop to save costs when I'm not actively coding. The VM is ~$7/day running, so I halt it overnight. The wait for Tailscale is just ~10 seconds for the mesh to reconnect after boot.
I started with a beefy VM to make sure I could ramp up without hitting slowdowns, but I'm planning to migrate to an Intel NUC running Proxmox at home soon.
I see. It didn't make sense to me but I just found that Vultr has snapshots, which is probably what you are using.
> The real bottleneck isn't typing on mobile - it's reviewing the output.
Sounds like you need a foldable phone!
Better yet multiple foldable phone!
how do you manage to review code without running said apps or testing them, sure the code might look correct, but doesn't mean whatever issue / feature works or the bug is actually fixed
Each worktree has its own Docker containers including the database, so I can hit the dev server from my phone browser via Tailscale. For quick checks I'll just curl an endpoint or check the logs. For anything visual, I open the branch's preview URL.
But honestly - if it needs serious testing, I wait until I'm at my desk. The phone workflow is best for "let Claude run while I'm out" rather than deep debugging.
A dedicated OVH or Hetzner box would be faster and cheaper even when on all the time :)