Questions

Is this a remote desktop?

No, and the difference is the whole product. A remote desktop streams pixels of a screen designed for a mouse. ShiftStage sends the services themselves — the terminal is a terminal, the file list is a file list — and your phone draws them natively.

Does it run AI models?

No. It drives the agentic CLIs already installed on your Mac: yours, with your keys, your config and your subscriptions. Nothing is sent to us and no model is called on our side. What ShiftStage adds is a lifecycle — start a session, watch it, answer its questions from wherever you are, archive it.

Can you read my files or my commands?

No. Traffic is end-to-end encrypted between your two devices, and both sides authenticate each other by device keys. On your own network nothing of ours is in the path at all. Away from home, when a direct connection is impossible, a relay node forwards an encrypted stream it cannot decrypt and keeps nothing.

What does the free version leave out?

Distance and scale, not features. One Mac on your own network gives you every service in full, with no account and no request to our servers. The subscription opens the path from outside your network, and the second Mac.

I run my own node. Do I still need a subscription?

Yes. The subscription pays for the app, not for our bandwidth. Your own node buys you something different and worth more: nobody — us included — sees which device connected to which, and when. Our nodes see that much, even though they cannot read a byte of the traffic.

What happens if the subscription lapses while I am working?

Nothing. A running session is not cut off — cutting someone's work is not a way to ask for money, and a terminal with a build in it does not close by calendar. The next connection is the one that will not open.

Does it work when the Mac is asleep?

No, and it tells you so instead of timing out. A locked Mac is a separate case: it is awake, but it cannot assemble its keys, so the connection fails with that exact reason named rather than a generic error.

Which networks does it work on?

Same Wi-Fi: directly, over Bonjour. Different networks: directly whenever hole punching succeeds, and through a relay when it does not. Mobile networks and hotel Wi-Fi are the normal case, not the exception — there is also an entry point on port 443 for networks that block everything else.

Is there an Android app? A Linux agent?

No. The app is native iOS, iPadOS and watchOS; the agent is native macOS. A cross-platform shell would have cost exactly the thing the product is for.

Why not just use SSH?

Use SSH — it is excellent, and ShiftStage does not replace it. What it adds is everything around the shell: a file browser that understands transfers, git as structure, a process list, notifications when a build ends, and an AI session you can answer from a watch. SSH gives you a text pipe and leaves the rest to you.

What about the App Store?

The iOS app will be there. The macOS agent will not: sandboxing is mandatory in the Mac App Store, and a sandboxed agent cannot give you a PTY, your whole file system or your own CLIs. It ships signed and notarised, straight from this site, and updates itself.