Introduction
What it is
Patchwire is a small CLI plus HTTP agent that lets you run Claude Code on a different machine than the one you’re typing on. Your laptop stays the source of truth. The remote does the heavy AI work. Changes come back as a reviewable unified diff.
It’s two binaries:
| Binary | Where it runs | What it does |
|---|---|---|
patchwire | Your laptop | Syncs the project, calls the agent, previews diffs, runs git apply |
patchwire-agent | A bigger machine (Mac or Linux) | Runs claude --print on a clean checkout and returns a git diff |
Who it’s for
- Mobile, Flutter, and Dart engineers whose builds and AI runs are heavy enough that they want a dedicated machine doing them.
- Anyone with a desktop that’s faster than their laptop and wants the laptop to stay quiet.
- Teams curious about “remote dev” but allergic to filesystem latency. This isn’t
code-server. The IDE never touches the remote. - Privacy-aware folks who want the network plane to stay inside Tailscale, with bearer-token auth, and no exposure to the public internet.
What it isn’t
- Not a full remote IDE. Your editor, formatter, debugger, and hot-reload all stay local. Only the AI is remote.
- Not a sync product.
rsyncruns on demand, one-way, with explicit excludes. Nothing watches your filesystem in the background. - Not a Claude replacement. It calls
claudeon the remote, so you still need a Claude Code subscription.
Design principles
- Local stays local. Your machine is always the truth.
- Reviewable changes only. Nothing is applied without a diff and your
enter. - Boring transport. SSH, rsync, and HTTP. No custom protocols.
- Defense in depth. Bearer-token auth plus SSH keys plus a private network (Tailscale).
- Fail safe. A failed AI run leaves the remote tree exactly as it was.
Status
v0.3.0. Now ships: multi-developer mode (per-user bearer tokens, isolated project directories, fair queue), streamed /ask, VS Code extension, secret-safe sync (respects .gitignore), patchwire-agent usage per-user reporting, and per-user policy enforcement (project allowlist + rate limit). See Roadmap for what’s next.