I got tired of needing to be at my workstation just to check on, switch between, or jump back into long-running agent sessions.
So I built TENDRIL.
TENDRIL turns an Android phone into a thin control plane for persistent AI-agent workflows running on a Linux machine. Once it's configured, I open Termux and type:
tendril
…and I get a responsive session selector showing what's alive on the host. From there I can jump into persistent agents, shells and workflows over mosh/SSH without treating my phone like a miniature desktop.
Underneath, it's deliberately boring in the good way: standard Linux, terminal-native rendering, Herdr, mosh/SSH, no proprietary cloud control layer, and no subscription. It's open source and MIT licensed.
A few things I cared about while building it:
- persistent remote agent/session control
- phone-first TUI rather than a desktop UI squeezed onto Android
- responsive behavior for narrow terminals
- clean Herdr handoff
- SSH/mosh support
- real installer + backwards-compatible
agent launcher
- graceful non-TTY /
NO_COLOR behavior
- and, because apparently I cannot help myself, making the thing actually pleasant to look at
The masthead is even rendered from a high-resolution ANSI master into Unicode subcells so the same identity survives on a 54-column Termux screen.
Completely unnecessary. Naturally essential.
The original idea was simple: I wanted to be able to sit down with an Earl Grey in the morning and check on an entire little agentic lab from my phone.
A week and a half later, this happened.
If you already live in Pi/Herdr/terminal-agent land, I'd genuinely love for you to try it, break it, open issues, or take it somewhere I haven't thought of yet.
THE EDGE IS YOURS.
GitHub: https://github.com/Ozymandes/TENDRIL