A lot of "can non-programmers build software with AI" debates end in the same place: someone writes a clear task, someone else reviews and ships. The hand-off in between is usually a chat message that gets copied, pasted and partly lost.

Kiteline, an app for following coding agents (Claude Code, Codex and a dozen others) from an iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch, has a small feature aimed at that hand-off: prompt links. The desktop side (Mac, Windows, Linux) is open source at github.com/hon6/kiteline.

How a prompt link works

  1. The task text goes into a link.
  2. Opening the link on a phone shows a web page with the task and an "Open in Kiteline" button.
  3. The app opens the new-task screen with the text filled in. The receiver picks the project (a folder on their own computer) and starts now or schedules it.

A few decisions behind it:

  • Nothing runs on open. The link only fills in the form; a person has to confirm. A random link can't drive your agent.
  • Projects match by name. A link can carry a project name, matched against folder names on the receiver's computer; if nothing matches, they pick one. The task always runs on the receiver's own machine.
  • The task text stays out of server logs. It sits after the #, which browsers don't send when loading the landing page.
  • Readable without the app. The landing page shows the task text and a download link.

The controls you need after handing it off

Once the task is running, the phone exposes the same controls you'd use at the keyboard:

  • Permission mode: manual, accept edits, plan, or auto (the four Shift+Tab modes in Claude Code). Plan mode is the safe default for someone new: the agent writes a plan and waits for approval.
  • Model and reasoning effort, applied from the next message.
  • Command approvals pushed to the phone, showing the exact command before you allow it.
  • Hold to talk for adding a requirement while walking.

Watching several at once

The session list puts anything waiting on you at the top. There's also a "world" view where each session is a small character in a voxel office, which turns out to be a quick way to see who is working and who is waiting.

The phone app is on the App Store (search Kiteline); there's no Android version yet. Claude Code is a product of Anthropic; Kiteline is an independent third-party tool.