The Android app

Your teammates on your phone: a home briefing, chats with live replies and attachments, search, the computer's screens, pages, and approvals you can decide from the notification shade. It is an Expo app (React Native) that talks to your open-bot deployment through the same RPC contract the web app serves (packages/api). It is installed over USB; there is no Play Store listing. Building, configuring and testing it is covered in apps/mobile/README.md.

Home and teammates

Home leads with what needs you, then your teammates, then a briefing of work finished while you were away. Each teammate's avatar shows what they're doing: a soft pulse while they work, an amber ring and mark while they wait for you, and a dashed ring while they're up next. Teammates who need you sort first; tap one to open your latest chat with them, or hold to open their profile. A teammate's profile has Message, New chat and Screen, how much they do on their own, their Always allow rules, and every conversation they're in. Use Computer to watch or take over a teammate's screen; suggested instructions are still reviewed on the web.

Chats

Chats shows unread dots, previews and who is working; filter by Unread, Direct, Groups or Scheduled when there are any. Hold a chat to mark it read or archive it. Use New chat for a direct conversation or a group, and @-mention teammates to choose who answers. A teammate names a new chat after its topic once that's clear, and the chat list then says whose reply it is; a name you give is never replaced. The chat menu lets you rename or archive a conversation; archiving keeps its history. Tap a chat's title to open the teammate's profile. When a teammate is idle, the chat header, their profile and New chat show when they last worked, such as "Active 5m ago".

In a chat, a teammate's work folds into one line, such as "Worked for 21s · 5 steps", with the steps a tap away. While they work, one line says what they're doing right now, and long command output folds after 14 lines. Code scrolls sideways with a fade at the edge, and every code block has a copy button. Unsent text is kept per chat on the phone, so leaving for an approval or another app doesn't lose it.

Attach a photo, take one with the camera, or pick a file from the composer. Failed uploads can be retried or removed before sending. Images, Markdown, text and CSV/TSV files open in the app; tables scroll in both directions. PDFs and other formats open in a compatible app on the phone. The microphone adds dictation to the current draft; leaving that composer cancels recognition. The latest reply shows copy, read aloud and ratings under it; hold any reply, or use its More button, for the same actions plus its time and usage. Feedback offers an option to remember a lesson or try again. You can steer a working teammate with another message, stop it, or retry a failed or stopped turn.

Search and history

Use the header's search and notification buttons to find earlier work. Search finds teammates, chats, messages and pages; links to a teammate's reply load older history before scrolling to it. If loading history fails, use Retry to continue. Loaded history stays in place when newer replies arrive. A chat becomes read across devices after fresh history has loaded while it is visible; failed refreshes keep it unread.

Approvals and notifications

Approvals supports Approve, Deny and Always allow, with saved rules one tap away at the top. Requests that spend money, send email or delete things carry a short warning, in the chat and on the request itself. Past decisions are grouped by day. Notification approvals can be decided without opening the app; purchases use Review and require the phone's authentication check before approval. Reply on a message notification sends directly to its teammate, including in a group chat.

Settings

Settings, from your initial on Home, has Light, Dark or System appearance and a switch for haptics. Animations follow Android's Remove animations setting.

The computer on your phone

Computer lists every teammate's screen, including sleeping screens, its current holder, and requests for you; screens that need you come first. Each screen has one action right on the list: Wake, Watch, or Take over. Watching a sleeping screen does not start it; use Wake or Take over. The live viewer is noVNC bundled inside the app, with a fresh short-lived VNC token for every connection. Your session cookie stays on the React Native side and is never passed to the WebView.

Tap to click, hold for a right click, and drag with two fingers to scroll. Pinch zooms the local screen; Fit, which appears once the screen connects, resets it. Use Trackpad for relative cursor movement and precise taps. The keyboard bar provides Esc, Tab, Ctrl, Alt, arrows, Enter, and Paste from phone. In portrait the screen fits the width; in landscape it fills the height beside the controls. Rotating during takeover locks landscape until you hand back or leave the screen. Back opens the hand-back sheet, where you can leave an optional note or stay in control.

Takeover requests open the screen from Home, chat, or a notification. The notification offers Take over and Type the code. Type the code is for a 4-to-8-digit one-time code, with a live preview and the focused site's name. The app can request Android's consent to fill a code from one incoming SMS; it never requests SMS-reading permissions or sends the code without your tap. Manual entry remains available if consent is denied, Play services is unavailable, or the SMS is ambiguous.

Code entry blocks the teammate's desktop tools, including screenshots, until botd verifies the code is gone from the browser's fields and page text. If it is still visible, you keep control and can clear it before handing back. An uncertain response is recovered by its operation id; the app never blindly repeats typing. After a computer restart, affected screens stay paused; explicit recovery discards their browser pages before returning control. The submitted code is not stored in operation records, logs, or botd state.

Pages

Pages are explainers, comparisons and dashboards your teammates build as HTML and publish for you. A page a teammate publishes shows in the chat as a card with its picture; tap it to open the version it published. Home lists the latest pages under your teammates, and All pages opens the full list, pinned ones first. Hold a page to pin it to the top or delete it. Search finds pages by their title and summary.

A page opens in a viewer that loads it from open-bot's separate pages service, with a link that works for a few minutes. Your session cookie is never passed to that WebView, cookies and storage are off, and the page can't reach the network. Links in a page open in a browser tab, never inside the viewer. The viewer follows the app's light or dark appearance and gets a fresh link when that changes or when an old link has run out. Tap the title to switch versions, and when a teammate publishes a newer version while you read, a banner offers it. Select text in a page and tap Ask about this, or use the Ask button in the header, to ask its teammate a question or for a change. The question goes to the chat the page was made in, or the teammate's own chat, with the page, version and passage attached. The menu also opens the page in the browser, goes to its chat, pins it or deletes it. A notification about a published page opens the page.

Phone connection

The phone can carry teammates' browsing when your Mac is offline, or always, if you choose. A native foreground service runs the same egress agent as the desktop app, without starting React Native, and a high-priority push wakes it when the computer needs a connection. See Desktop app and egress for the tunnel it carries.

Share a link or text from any app (like a LinkedIn post) and pick open-bot to send it to a teammate. Choose Make a page explaining this (which runs the built-in /page skill), Summarize it for me, or Just send it, add an optional note, and pick who gets it. The message goes to that teammate's direct chat, and the chat opens. A share waits until you're signed in and past the app lock.