🛰️ Development environment: the Remote Control daemon¶

Status: reference. Written 2026-10-09.

Written for a developer who wants a long-lived claude remote-control session on a development host, so they can drive this checkout from claude.ai or the mobile app. Assumed: Claude Code is installed and logged in, and tmux and python3 are on PATH.

🔁 What it does¶

scripts/rc-daemon.sh keeps claude remote-control running. Claude Code gives up after ten minutes of persistent errors, and no setting changes that, so the script runs it in a restart loop inside a detached tmux session. After a run shorter than five minutes the restart delay doubles, up to a cap of five minutes. A run longer than that resets the delay to five seconds.

🔧 The settings file¶

The script reads its settings from scripts/rc-daemon.env, which it sources at startup:

1	`cp scripts/rc-daemon.env.example scripts/rc-daemon.env`

Variable	Default	Meaning
`RC_DIR`	`/workspace`	Directory the session runs in. It must be a trusted workspace
`RC_NAME`	`chitragupta-dtl1`	Remote Control session name, as claude.ai shows it
`RC_PREFIX`	`chitragupta-dtl1`	Name prefix for sessions spawned from it
`RC_PERMISSION_MODE`	`bypassPermissions`	Permission mode for those sessions
`TMUX_SESSION`	`rc-chitragupta-dtl1`	`tmux` session the loop runs in
`RC_LOG`	`~/claude-daemon/rc-chitragupta-dtl1.log`	The loop's log; the pane output goes to `<name>.pane.log` beside it

Every line in the file is written as VAR="${VAR:-default}", so a variable already set in the environment wins. That gives you a one-off override without editing the file:

RC_NAME=scratch scripts/rc-daemon.sh start

To use a different file altogether, set RC_ENV_FILE:

RC_ENV_FILE=~/my-rc.env scripts/rc-daemon.sh start

🔑 One-time setup¶

claude remote-control asks two questions once and stores the answers in ~/.claude.json: whether to trust RC_DIR and whether to enable Remote Control. The detached pane cannot answer them, so start checks both first and refuses to start without them. To answer them:

cd /workspace && claude remote-control

Answer both prompts, press Ctrl-C, then start the daemon.

🚀 Running it¶

scripts/rc-daemon.sh start     # launch in a detached tmux session; a no-op if already running
scripts/rc-daemon.sh status    # "running" or "not running" (exit 1)
scripts/rc-daemon.sh log       # follow the loop's log
scripts/rc-daemon.sh attach    # watch the pane; detach with Ctrl-b d
scripts/rc-daemon.sh restart   # stop, then start
scripts/rc-daemon.sh stop      # Ctrl-C claude, then kill the tmux session

Run restart after editing rc-daemon.env. A running loop does not re-read the file.

When something goes wrong, read the pane log (~/claude-daemon/rc-chitragupta-dtl1.pane.log by default) first. It captures claude's own output, such as "Workspace not trusted", which the loop's log does not.

👯 Running a second daemon¶

Each daemon needs its own TMUX_SESSION and RC_LOG. start decides whether a daemon is already running only by checking for its tmux session, so two daemons that share a session name block each other, and two that share a log write into the same file. Give the second one its own settings file and change all six values:

cp scripts/rc-daemon.env ~/rc-other.env    # then edit it
RC_ENV_FILE=~/rc-other.env scripts/rc-daemon.sh start

Pass the same RC_ENV_FILE to every later command for that daemon, stop and status included. Without it they act on the default daemon.