I’m a software engineer with a decade of experience. I vibe code all of my side projects from my phone and don’t read any of the code. Here is how you can try my mobile setup for two months with free trials:

TLDR: Linode offers a generous $100 credit that you can use over 60 days. Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Roll credits.

Alright.. you may want a little bit more than that. So I’ll give a quick overview of my mobile setup and then show you how to get it working using the Linode free trial. I’m not gonna lie, it’s definitely a pain in the ass but it’s a one time setup and SO worth it once it’s done.

A little backstory

I know you can just use the Claude Code app, for example, to code stuff via mobile but I personally never found that experience to be very good. So without further ado..

My Mobile Setup!

I currently use a raspberry pi on my own network and then ssh into it from my phone via the Termius app. I have Claude Code and all of its dependencies installed on the raspberry pi and that’s essentially it in a nutshell. To get this working, no raspberry pi is needed. You can set this all up for free using the steps below.

First, just in case, what is a raspberry pi? A raspberry pi is a small, lightweight computer that (before the RAM shortage) used to be fairly inexpensive. You can think of it as a small server you can always leave on and do really cool stuff with. For this post, we’ll be using a free Linode server.

Second, what the hell is ssh? To quote Michael Reeves, that sounds like nerd shit! Answer: I’ll walk you through what you’ll need to do. You can read about it separately, but since this post is already pretty long, I’ll skip the details. At a high level it’s a secure way to remotely connect to a server.

But I will say, the linode path is how I tested and validated all of this a while back so if you set it up the free way and like it at the end of your trial, it may be worth investing in a raspberry pi or using an old laptop so it stays free.

And now onto the details!

Downloading Termius and Generating your SSH Key

  1. On iPhone or Android download the Termius app. This the app you will use to ssh into your server from your phone.
  2. You’ll need to generate an ssh key. You can think of this as a password. There are two components to the key:
    • public: this isn’t secret, you’ll give this to Linode later
    • private: this IS secret. Treat it like an important password. But since we’re generating it on the Termius app, you shouldn’t need to touch it.
  3. Find the Keychain section of Termius and inside it click ”+” and “Generate Key”.
    • Give it a name and passphrase then save it.
  4. Now if you longpress the key in the Keychain tab you should be able to click Edit (at least that’s how you do it on iOS) and see the key’s details. Just keep this in mind, you’ll need to copy the public key when setting up Linode later.

Setting up your free Linode server

Linode (I think it’s now owned by Akamai) offers a $100 credit that you can use over 60 days. For Claude Code you need a minimum of 4GB of RAM to run it so that’s the server we’ll set up. That’s also the server I used when I was testing this all out before my pi.

NOTE: you do need to provide a credit card to start the trial, but as long as you cancel before the 60 days are up, you won’t get charged.

  1. Sign up for your free trial. Just google Lindoe free $100 credit and you should be able to find it.
    • Enter email, credit card info, etc
  2. What a pain in the ass, but now you’re in! Free $100 BABY.
  3. Click Create Linode
    • Region: whichever is closest to you
    • Linux Distribution: whatever Ubuntu LTS version it defaults to is fine
    • Switch to Shared CPU tab
    • Pick Linode 4 GB
    • Change the Linode Label to whatever you want or just leave it
    • Let your browser generate a strong root password
    • Click “Add SSH Key”
      • Remember how we said you’d need to add your public ssh key from Termius? Now is your time to shine! Copy that public key you glorious bastard!
      • Paste the public key in and give it whatever name you want
      • Make sure the key you just added is checked in the table
    • Click “Create Firewall”
      • Click “From a Template”
      • Give it whatever label you want
      • Choose “Public Firewall Template”
      • Click “Create Firewall”
  4. Click “Create Linode” and let it provision your new server (keep this page up for the next step)

Good Lord, are we not done yet??? Why did I sign up to do this?

Don’t worry, we’re almost there! There is light at the end of the tunnel.

Back to Termius

  1. Click “Hosts” -> ”+” -> “New Host”
  2. Give it whatever label you want
  3. Paste in the public IP address from the linode page
  4. Under “Credentials” pick your ssh key you generated earlier and set the username to root
    • NOTE: you can and probably should change the user from root but this is already so long and it’s a proof of concept
  5. Save
  6. Click on your new host to connect! Click continue and.. BOOOOOOOOOM. You are officially a hacker. Time to pull the hood on your hoodie up and type 1000 words per minute to hack into the mainframe.

All that’s left now is to install Claude Code (or whatever coding agent you use) and let the mobile vibes rollllll.

If a follow-up on installing Claude Code would be helpful, just let me know!

If you’ve made it this far, you are a brave soul and I salute you. If you found value in this post, I encourage you to consider subscribing here to my blog :) Happy Monday everyone and keep on vibin’!