Create products from anywhere.The desk is optional.

Stop babysitting your agents. Mochitao is a native Android terminal that connects straight to a machine you own, over SSH.

Phone

Hosts nothing. A window onto your machine.

shop-apifix VND rounding at checkout
WorkingRunning the tests.
build-01migrate the orders table
WorkingReading the schema.
docsupdate the README
DoneFinished. Nothing waiting.

dev-box

Your machine. Every agent, shell and file lives here.

One SSH connection. Nobody in the middle.

Fictional machines and tasks. Agent states need Herdr on your machine; without it Mochitao is still a full SSH client.

Hand off. Go live your day. Answer one line.

Mochitao is not an IDE and it does not run your work. It is the thing you open when the machine is busy and you are not in front of it.

1
Hand off
Give a coding agent a long job on a machine you own: a home server, a workstation, a cloud VM. The agent runs there. No AI model runs on your phone.
Direct SSH. Password, keyboard-interactive, or a key from the Android Keystore.
2
Go live your day
The phone hosts nothing. The operating system can kill the app at any moment and you lose no work. Reopen it and you land on the exact tab you left.
Foreground service while a session is alive. Automatic reconnect with backoff.
3
Answer one line
The agent stops and asks. It shows as waiting for you on its own tab, with the question on screen. Type a number, press Enter, get back to your day.
A native tab per agent pane, through Herdr, which you install on your own machine.

A terminal on the phone showing a coding agent that has stopped and is asking permission to edit a file, with the options numbered one, two and three. — An agent asking permission to edit a file. Answer with 1, 2 or 3.

You can tell which one needs you.

Install Herdr on your own machine and every agent pane becomes a native tab carrying a state. The state is never colour alone: the shape differs and the word is always there.

Working
Running. Nothing is waiting on you.
Waiting for you
It stopped to ask. This is the tab you open.
Done
Finished on its own.
Error
It failed, and says why.

Without Herdr there are no agent tabs, and nothing else changes. Mochitao is a full SSH client either way.

The Connections screen: a carousel of running sessions above a panel of saved machines. — Every session and every saved machine on one screen.

Nobody in the middle.

Mochitao connects your phone straight to your machine. It names each cost next to its benefit, because this is the part you should check.

Keys that stay put: Keys generated in the app are created in the Android Keystore, and signing is gated behind biometrics. Imported keys go through the same gate.
A changed host key stops everything: A mismatch blocks the connection outright. There is no always-accept button, and the old entry has to be deleted in Settings first.
Nothing installed on your host: Mochitao installs nothing on your machine and opens no extra port on it.

The ledger

You get	It costs
No account.	No sync across devices.
No relay, no cloud.	No push notifications.
Nothing on your host.	Agent tabs need Herdr, which you install yourself.
Nothing runs on the phone.	It is a viewport, not a shell on the phone itself.
Direct, on Android.	Android only for now.

If you need those, this is not the app for you yet.

A dialog saying the server key has changed, showing the stored and offered fingerprints side by side. — A changed host key, with both fingerprints shown.

A real terminal, real files, your own look.

A terminal showing git log output and a Vietnamese commit message rendered at the correct column width. — git log, with Vietnamese diacritics on the grid

A terminal that reads text

Full VT emulation with truecolor, scrollback search, selection and copy, and correct width handling for Vietnamese combining diacritics and CJK.

An SFTP file browser showing the files on the connected host. — SFTP over the session you already had

Files over the same connection

An SFTP browser on the SSH session you already have: search, multi-select, chmod, a resumable transfer queue, and in-app text editing.

A settings list of terminal palettes, each showing a preview of coloured terminal text. — 37 terminal palettes, importable from JSON

One app, your face

10 app themes in 5 light and dark pairs, 37 terminal palettes, 9 terminal fonts, and import your own palette from a JSON file.

Type on a phone, seriously

Up to three quick-key rows you arrange yourself, sticky Ctrl and Alt, a snippet library with per-OS overrides, voice input, and your own key combinations.

Questions people ask first.

The honest answers, including the ones that rule the product out for some people.

What does it actually connect to?

A machine you already own, such as a home server, a workstation or a cloud VM, over SSH, directly from your phone. Mochitao installs nothing on that machine and opens no extra port on it. It does not give you a shell on the phone itself.

What happens to my keys?

Keys generated in the app are created in the Android Keystore, which on devices with a hardware secure element keeps the key material inside it. Signing operations require biometric confirmation. Imported keys go through the same gate, but they are held by the app.

Why does it say there is no account, as if that were a downside?

Because it is. Mochitao does not store anything about you or your machines, which also means no sync across devices and no push notifications. If you need those, this is not the app for you yet. What you get in exchange: your keys never leave the device, and nothing you run depends on someone else's infrastructure.

What is Herdr, and do I need it?

Herdr is a third-party terminal multiplexer for coding agents, Apache-2.0, that you install on your own machine. Mochitao speaks to it over a socket and does not bundle or link it. With it, every agent pane becomes a native tab showing whether it is working, waiting for you, or done. Without it, Mochitao is still a complete SSH client: the agent view degrades instead of disappearing.

Does the app run anything on my phone?

No AI model and no agent runs on the device. Every process, the agent, the shell, the multiplexer, lives on the remote host. The app is a viewport, and the operating system may kill it at any moment without losing work, which is why it reconnects and reattaches to the exact tab.

Which phones does it run on?

Android 8.0 (API 26) or newer, on an arm64 device, which covers nearly every phone made since about 2016. It is not built for x86_64, so it will not install on most emulators.

Is it open source?

Not currently. There is no licence file and the repository is not public, so nothing here should be read as a claim that it is.

Does it collect anything about me?

No. There is no analytics, no crash reporting, and no backend. Host list, keys, known_hosts, snippets and preferences stay in app-private storage. The full text is on the privacy policy page.

Is it on Google Play?

Not yet. Launch is in preparation, and Google Play will be the only channel.

Send the next task from the coffee shop.

Launch is in preparation. Until then, questions are welcome.

[email protected]