Video · 2026-07-22 · 49m · 6 moments

Mosh, Caddy & Tailscale: A Remote Dev Deep Dive

✦ AI generated

timeline · colored by role

Claim◆

Running your dev process on a remote machine — not your laptop — is the future, and it's already becoming popular.

Scott argues that the trend of running development on a remote machine is growing, driven by agent workflows that need to persist even when the laptop is closed.

transcript

Scott Tolinski: What this means, why you would do it, and really what it is is that you'd be running your dev process on a machine that is maybe not your main machine or your laptop. And this is something that is going to become more popular. It's already becoming popular. You see memes about people not shutting their laptops.

Definition

Mosh is a drop-in SSH replacement that stays connected when you close and reopen your laptop, with no lag time.

Scott explains that Mosh keeps terminal sessions alive through laptop closures, reconnecting automatically without the need to re-SSH in each time.

transcript

Scott Tolinski: It is basically a drop-in replacement for SSH. The benefit there is that when you Mosh instead of SSH into something, well, what happens it stays connected. If I close my laptop and reopen it, it reconnects automatically with like no lag time at all. So, I don't have to re-SSH in every single time I'm doing anything.

gives example · 1

Claim

Caddy is the better choice over Portless because it's battle-tested, more full-featured, and AI is very good at writing Caddy files.

Scott recommends Caddy over Vercel's Portless for local reverse proxying, arguing that Caddy's maturity, feature set, and the fact that it is well-represented in AI training data make it the superior choice.

transcript

Scott Tolinski: Caddy has been around for a long time and it is battle tested and again um it's more full featured and AI is really good at writing Caddy files. And then you look at something like Vercel did that Zero Lang. It's like their their you know, AI language and it hasn't been touched in several weeks. Like it it's like they did that initial post and then forgot about it real quick.

Claim

Tailscale is significantly easier to set up than Cloudflare alternatives for connecting remote machines.

Wes tried Cloudflare's approach alongside Scott's Tailscale setup and found it far more complex, recommending Tailscale as the easier first choice.

transcript

Wes Bos: I only went the like Cloudflare route cuz Scott was all in on Tailscale. I was like, we should have like a we should both do a different one and balanced take on it. But, it was it was not easy to get set up. And and even then there was like some weird issues with accessing some localhost on my phone. So, I wouldn't I would probably say check out Tailscale first.

supports · 1

Mechanism◆

Herder is a tmux alternative with a sidebar that shows agent status (blocked, running, done) — you instantly see what needs your attention.

Scott explains that Herder's killer feature is a sidebar reporting the real-time status of all coding agents, eliminating the need to tab through sessions to check on them.

transcript

Scott Tolinski: Herder has this unique little sidebar that reports the status of any of your agents in any coding agent platform, whether that is even like Hermes or open code or Pi or anything, it it shows you the status. So, whether that is blocked, so if it needs your attention, maybe it needs approval for something or it's running or it's done or it's just, you know, just sitting there, you always can look at the sidebar and instantly see is there something that needs my attention?

gives example · 1

Claim

Everybody is building tools for agents. Nobody is building actual products.

Wes observes that the market is flooded with terminal multiplexers and agent frameworks, all doing similar things slightly differently, with few actual products for end users.

transcript

Wes Bos: Everybody is building tools for agents. Nobody is building actual products. Everyone just is making tooling.

Highlight slides

Remote Dev Machines Are the Future✦ from: Running your dev process on a remote machine — not your laptop — is the future, and it's already becoming popular.Driven by Persistent Agent Workflows✦ from: Running your dev process on a remote machine — not your laptop — is the future, and it's already becoming popular.Herder: Agent Status at a Glance✦ from: Herder is a tmux alternative with a sidebar that shows agent status (blocked, running, done) — you instantly see what needs your attention.Three Status States✦ from: Herder is a tmux alternative with a sidebar that shows agent status (blocked, running, done) — you instantly see what needs your attention.

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