---
title: My AI Workspace Never Sleeps
description: >
  Stop treating the laptop as the dev machine; treat it as a client to an
  always-on workspace you reconnect to.
url: 'https://stroops.tech/journal/my-ai-workspace-never-sleeps'
last_updated: '2026-06-30'
---
> No laptop on me today. The Mac mini at home is awake and working, and I'm replying to a few coding agents from my phone in the coffee line.

## How I work now

I used to carry my dev environment with me: open the laptop, open the editor, start, then set it all up again the next morning.

Now it doesn't move. A Mac mini runs at home. A few `tmux` sessions stay open, the agents keep going, and my laptop, desktop, and phone are just screens I reconnect to.

```text
   phone · laptop · desktop        (whatever I'm holding)
        │
        │  WireGuard, the only way in
        ▼
   ┌─ Mac mini at home · on 24/7
   │
   │  tmux ─┬─ claude
   │        ├─ cursor
   │        ├─ build + logs
   │        └─ git / tests
   │
   └─ I attach over SSH, or Mosh when it drops
```

The agents keep working while I'm gone, overnight or on the move. The history, the open sessions, a task mid-run: all still there when I reconnect. Nothing to rebuild in the morning. Work stopped living on the device in front of me.

## One thing I'd skip

At first I reached the box with DeskIn, a remote desktop app, mirroring its whole screen to my laptop. It worked, but it was heavy: laggy, tied to a logged-in GUI session, and miserable from a phone. WireGuard plus `tmux` replaced all of it. Now it's just a terminal I reattach to, the session stays alive on the Mac mini, and a phone is enough. I'd skip the remote-desktop phase.

## If it's useful

This is just how I work right now, not a setup to copy. The actual wiring is its own step-by-step: [Build an Always-on AI Workspace](/playbooks/build-always-on-ai-workspace). Mine, in case it's useful.