Control plane for AI coding agents: mobile-first, zero-lag, always-on

What it does

Codeman is essentially a web-native tmux session manager glued around existing AI coding CLIs such as Claude Code, OpenCode, and Gemini CLI. It hosts a Fastify-based control plane that exposes persistent terminal sessions through an xterm.js web UI, letting you start, monitor, and orchestrate multiple agents from a browser instead of a local shell. The stack is TypeScript and Node.js, and it runs fully self-hosted on your own hardware.

The interesting bit

Instead of treating remote terminal access as a dumb pipe, Codeman layers a Mosh-inspired local-echo DOM overlay directly inside xterm.js to mask network latency, renders animated connection lines between parent and child agents in real time, and replaces mobile password entry with cryptographically secure, single-use QR tokens that rotate every 60 seconds.

Key highlights

• Mobile-first xterm.js interface with swipe navigation, a keyboard accessory bar for slash commands like /init and /clear, and 44px touch targets.
• QR auth using short-lived, single-use tokens mapped to 256-bit secrets; the design explicitly addresses the six attack classes identified in a USENIX Security 2025 study on QR login vulnerabilities.
• Live subagent visualization via draggable floating windows that show real-time tool calls and file reads, with animated lines mapping up to three levels of agent hierarchy.
• Zero-lag input overlay extracted as the standalone xterm-zerolag-input package; it buffers keystrokes locally and reconciles server echo invisibly.
• Respawn Controller with circuit-breaker logic and health scoring to keep agents running unattended for 24+ hours, cycling context commands when idle is detected.
• Supports up to 20 parallel sessions with per-session token and cost tracking.

Verdict

Worth a look if you run AI coding agents for long tasks and want to supervise or restart them from a phone without suffering through mobile SSH. Skip it if you are looking for a standalone agent framework rather than a browser-based wrapper around existing CLI tools.