The Need Was Obvious

If you have been using LLM agents for development, you have probably had the same thought I did:

“Why do I need to be sitting at my computer for this?”

The agent is doing the work. I am giving it directions. Directions I can give from anywhere — my phone, my couch, while waiting for my daughter to fall asleep.

That is exactly what I built with Butler IO.

Butler IO: My DIY Remote Control

Butler IO started as a home management tool — a digital “Butler’s Book” for keeping track of house info, maintenance schedules, and seasonal tasks.

But then I realized: if I can talk to an AI agent from my phone to manage my house… why not point it at my code projects too?

So I did.

I built a system where I could send instructions from my phone, through Firebase, to my home server running an LLM agent that had access to my project folders.

Code reviews? From my phone. Refactoring? From my phone. Bug fixing? From my phone. New features? From my phone.

I was implementing features on Butler through Butler itself. Recursive. Meta. Wild.

It became the workflow that made my “game dev by nap time” tagline actually real.

Then Anthropic Shipped It

When Anthropic announced the remote control feature for Claude Code, I had a moment of pure joy.

Not because my thing was now obsolete — but because it validated the idea.

I just tried it and it works great!

The implementation is different from what I built, but the result is remarkably similar: you can direct a coding agent without being chained to your terminal.

And So Did Hundreds of Others

I know I am not special here. I am willing to bet hundreds of developers built their own version of this.

The need was too obvious. The tools were there. The gap was just begging to be filled.

Whether it was a custom setup like mine, or something more polished — a lot of people arrived at the same destination through different paths.

Happy Engineering

Speaking of different paths — I also tried Happy from Happy Coder and it works great as well.

It is awesome to see this space growing. Different tools, different approaches, but all solving the same fundamental problem: letting developers direct their agents from wherever they are.

What This Means

This is one of those moments where the ecosystem catches up to what power users were already doing.

And that is a great sign.

It means the workflow is real. It means it is not just a hack — it is how development is going to work.

For me, it means I can keep making games for my kids during nap time. And now I have even more options for how to do it.