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No. There are no accounts in Agents At Work, and nothing asks you to sign in: not the Mac app, not the Linux command, not the phone app. A phone and a computer are paired by scanning a QR code that the computer shows (see "How do I link my phone?" below). The only thing you ever buy is an optional plan, and that goes through the App Store or Google Play.

On your Mac, click the Agents At Work menu bar icon and choose Link Mobile. macOS asks for your password or Touch ID first, so a random person at your desk can't generate a pairing code, and then a QR code appears. On your phone, open Agents At Work, go to Computers, and tap the QR icon. Point the camera at the Mac's QR code. That one scan links the phone and sets up the end-to-end encryption key the two of them share.

On Linux, aaw link prints the QR code in the terminal. The phone scans the screen showing that terminal: a monitor, or the laptop window you are SSHed in from. The code is wide, so widen the terminal or zoom out if it wraps. Running aaw link again prints a fresh code, and phones you paired earlier keep working.

The earlier version of Agents At Work used accounts and a different engine on the computer. Moving to the current one takes a few minutes per device, and it goes in this order:

1. Phones first. Update the phone app. Then on each phone, remove the old computers (swipe them away), or use Settings → Unlink this Phone.
2. Mac. Install the new Mac app over the old one and open it. It cleans up what the old engine left behind: its background daemons, hooks, the line it added to your shell profile, and the ~/.agent-bridge folder. Then choose Link Mobile and scan the code with your phone.
3. Linux. Run the install command again, or run aaw update with the old tool. Either one replaces the old host with aaw-core. Then run aaw link and scan. If you install with pipx instead and aaw fails with "run_python.sh: No such file or directory", the old tool's launcher is still there: rm ~/.local/bin/aaw, then pipx install --force aaw-core.

Sessions started under the earlier version are not carried over, so start them again after the move. Your old sign-in is no longer used anywhere, and we delete old accounts on request.

Show a fresh QR code on the computer: Link Mobile from the Mac menu bar, or aaw link on Linux. On the phone, open Agents At Work, go to Computers, tap the QR icon, and scan it. Other phones you paired earlier keep working. If you gave the old phone away, open it first and use Settings → Unlink this Phone.

Yes. Link each computer by scanning its QR code, and each one appears as a separate computer in the mobile app. How many computers a phone can use on our hosted relay depends on the plan:

• Free: 1 computer
• Personal: up to 3 computers
• Pro: up to 15 computers, for teams

The limit is counted per phone: each phone counts the computers it has linked on our relay. Scanning a computer you already have again does not count twice. Computers on a self-hosted relay never count. See Pricing for the details.

Make sure you have scanned the computer's QR code with this phone (see above). Each phone keeps its own list of computers, so a computer you linked on another phone has to be scanned again here.

On a Mac, the Agents At Work app must be running and connected to the internet. If it is and the Mac still doesn't appear, quit and relaunch the app. On Linux, check aaw status or systemctl --user status aaw-supervisor; the service must be running. If the computer is paired with a self-hosted relay, the phone has to reach that relay too.

The computer keeps one outbound connection to the relay, the server that passes encrypted messages between your computer and your phone. If the computer went to sleep, lost its network connection, or the app or service was stopped, that connection drops and the phone shows the computer as offline. Wake the computer and make sure the Agents At Work app (or, on Linux, the aaw-supervisor service) is running. On a Linux server you log out of, also check that lingering is on (see the Linux answer above).

A closed lid puts a laptop to sleep, and a sleeping computer can't run your agents or talk to your phone. While a session runs, Agents At Work stops the computer from going to sleep on its own when it sits idle, but it can't overrule the lid: a MacBook on battery always sleeps when you close it, and so do most Linux laptops. The phone then shows the computer as offline. A message you send while it sleeps can arrive during one of the computer's short background wakes and not reach the agent; the phone tells you when that happens. Open the lid, and once the computer shows as online again, send the message again.

To keep agents working while you are away from the laptop:

• Leave the lid open. Turn the brightness all the way down if you like; the computer keeps running.
• On a Mac, use closed-display mode. Connect it to power and an external display (plus a keyboard and mouse), then close the lid.
• On a Mac that must run closed with no display, turn sleep off in Terminal with sudo pmset -a disablesleep 1. This works on battery too. Turn it back on with sudo pmset -a disablesleep 0 when you are done: a Mac that can't sleep drains its battery and gets hot in a bag.
• On a Linux laptop, set HandleLidSwitch=ignore and HandleLidSwitchExternalPower=ignore in /etc/systemd/logind.conf, then reboot. Some desktops (GNOME, KDE) have their own lid setting that also has to allow it.

Check that notifications are enabled for Agents At Work in your phone's Settings app. On iOS, go to Settings → Agents At Work → Notifications → Allow Notifications. On Android, go to Settings → Apps → Agents At Work → Notifications.

Permission prompts only go to the phone when the session is in Mobile mode. On a Mac you can switch it in the session window; on Linux, run aaw mobile-mode on. Also confirm that the Mac app, or aaw status on Linux, shows the session as running.

If your computer uses a self-hosted relay, background push notifications are not available (see "Can I host the relay myself?" below). The phone gets updates while the app is open.

From your phone, open the session in the mobile app and type your message in the input field at the bottom. This forwards the message to the agent's terminal. You can also send slash commands like /restart or /stop from the same field, or use the menu in the top-right corner of the session screen. On an iPad with a hardware keyboard, Return sends.

On Mac, use the session window: click an active session in the main Agents At Work window to open the live conversation feed, then type in the text bar at the bottom and press ⌘↩ to send. The session window also lets you search the conversation and toggle Mobile or Desktop mode from its status bar. Press ↑ and ↓ in the input field to cycle through your last 10 sent prompts.

On Linux, aaw send <id> "text" sends a message and aaw feed <id> -f follows the conversation live. aaw schedule <id> --at 10pm "text" sends it later.

The session window is a macOS window that shows the live conversation with any active agent session, so you can follow what the agent is doing without keeping a terminal visible. Click an active session in the main Agents At Work window to open it.

From the session window you can:

• Read the live conversation feed as the agent works
• Send messages to the agent using the text bar at the bottom (⌘↩ to send)
• Navigate your last 10 sent prompts with ↑ and ↓ in the input field
• Search the conversation by keyword
• See whether the session is in Mobile or Desktop mode, and switch modes, from the status bar at the bottom
• See whether auto-approve is active (a shield badge appears in the status bar when "Yes for this session" has been granted)

Yes. On Linux there is no app. A small background service (a systemd user service called aaw-supervisor) does what the Mac app does, and the aaw command covers pairing and sessions. Install with one command, no root needed:

curl -fsSL https://agentsatwork.app/install-linux.sh | bash

The installer checks the prerequisites, installs aaw-core into its own virtualenv, puts the aaw command in ~/.local/bin, turns on the shell integration (typing claude, codex, gemini, grok, cursor-agent or scoot in a project folder starts a bridged session), runs aaw link so you can scan the QR code, and installs the background service. Run the same command again to update. If you prefer to do it by hand: pipx install aaw-core, then aaw link, aaw service install, and aaw shell-integration on. The Linux section of the tutorial walks through it.

It runs headless, so sessions stay bridged to your phone after you close the SSH window. On a server, the service stops when you log out unless lingering is on. Turn it on with sudo loginctl enable-linger $USER; aaw service install tells you when it is off.

Requirements: a systemd distribution (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, RHEL and rebuilds), tmux, Python 3.11 or newer with venv, and at least one of Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Grok, Cursor, or Scoot.

Yes. The engine is the same on a Mac as on Linux, so a Mac mini, a Mac server, or any Mac nobody sits at can run it without the app: install Homebrew's pipx and tmux, then pipx install aaw-core, aaw link, and aaw service install. The service is a launchd agent that starts when the user logs in, so turn on automatic login for a Mac that reboots unattended, or run aaw supervisor in a tmux session if you only reach it over SSH.

The engine needs Python 3.11 or newer and tmux rather than a particular macOS version, so it may also run on Macs older than the app supports (the app needs macOS 14.6). We test on current macOS, so treat older versions as untested. The tutorial's headless Mac section has the steps.

Check tmux -V. RHEL 10 and its rebuilds ship a 2023 snapshot of tmux ("next-3.4") whose server crashes the first time anything reads a terminal pane, which the bridge does right after a session starts. The installer detects this build and refuses to continue. The fix is to build tmux 3.5 from source into /usr/local/bin (the installer prints the exact commands), then run tmux kill-server and systemctl --user restart aaw-supervisor. Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and Pop!_OS packages are fine.

A session that stops immediately can also mean the project folder no longer exists at the path the session was created with, for example after moving it. aaw start says so; start it again on the new path.

The logs usually say what went wrong. They are in ~/.aaw/logs/: supervisor.log for the service, and one daemon.<session>.log per session.

Yes, through Scoot, our own CLI. Install Scoot with pipx install scootcli, then install Ollama and pull at least one model (ollama pull qwen2.5, for example). Scoot runs in a terminal exactly like the other agents.

Start a Scoot session from the app, pick your model as provider/model (a local ollama/… model, or a cloud one) and your project folder, and send prompts from your phone as you would with any other agent. On Linux, aaw start ~/proj --agent scoot --model ollama/qwen2.5:latest does the same. Because a local model runs on your computer, your prompts never reach a third-party AI service and no API key is required. To reach cloud models like OpenAI or Anthropic, run scoot auth to add your own key.

If a local model does not appear, confirm that Ollama is running with ollama list in your terminal and that at least one model has been pulled.

If a local model stops responding, restart the Ollama server. Run pkill ollama && ollama serve in your terminal, or quit and relaunch the Ollama desktop app, then start the Scoot session again.

On a Mac, open the app and click Discover Agents from the menu. On Linux, run aaw install-hooks. Both re-run agent detection and hook installation. Make sure the agent CLI is installed and available in your $PATH. For Codex, confirm that hooks = true is set under [features] in ~/.codex/config.toml (the hook install adds it). For Gemini, confirm the hooks appear in ~/.gemini/settings.json. For Grok, confirm the binary is accessible (the curl installer places it in ~/.local/bin/grok, so make sure that directory is in your $PATH).

For Cursor, confirm cursor-agent --version works from a terminal. If plain agent returns a Grok version instead, that is a $PATH ordering conflict with Grok's own agent binary (both CLIs install a binary by that name), and Cursor itself is installed fine. For Scoot, confirm scoot --version works from a terminal (install it with pipx install scootcli); for local models, confirm Ollama is running (ollama list should return your installed models) and that at least one model has been pulled.

Scoot is a full agent: it reads and writes files, lists directories, and runs shell commands to complete multi-step tasks, asking for your approval before anything destructive. It works by calling tools, so a local model has to be one that can return tool calls.

For local models with Ollama, use a tool-capable one: the qwen2.5, qwen2.5-coder, or qwen3 families. A model that can't return tool calls can't act, so Scoot won't run on it. Cloud models (OpenAI, Anthropic) are all tool-capable, so any of them works.

Before doing anything potentially destructive, Scoot pauses and asks for your approval, either as a tap-to-approve card on your phone or inline in the Mac session window. You can approve once, approve for the whole session, or deny.

See the Scoot models section in the tutorial for a model-by-model comparison and RAM requirements.

Your computer encrypts everything it sends, including prompts, agent responses, tool-call summaries, and project paths, with AES-256-GCM before it leaves the machine. It goes to the phone through the relay, which only sees ciphertext and the routing information it needs to deliver it. Only your computer and your paired phones hold the key, so neither the relay nor AnswerSolutions can read your data.

The key is exchanged once, through the QR code you scan when you link a phone. There is no separate encryption setup step, and the key is never sent to our servers. Push notifications are delivered through Apple and Google (via Firebase) and only tell the phone that something happened.

The engine that runs on your computer is. It is called aaw-core, it is MIT licensed, and the source is on GitHub. It is published on PyPI as aaw-core, which is what the Linux installer and pipx install aaw-core use. The Mac app bundles the same engine.

The phone apps (iOS and Android) and the Mac app itself are not open source.

Yes. The relay is part of aaw-core, and the repository includes a docker compose setup to run it on your own server. When you run aaw link, it asks which relay to use, and the QR code carries that choice to the phone.

There is one limitation. On a self-hosted relay the phone gets updates while the app is open, but it does not get background push notifications, because those need the store apps' push credentials. On the plus side, computers on a self-hosted relay never count toward a plan.

Unlink this phone: Open the Agents At Work mobile app and go to Settings → Unlink this Phone. This removes the phone's pairings and clears its local data. To remove a single computer, swipe it away in the Computers list.

Delete your data: There are no accounts, so there is no account to delete. What Agents At Work knows about a computer lives on that computer (in ~/.aaw) and, encrypted, on the relay until it expires. To remove it from a computer, run aaw uninstall on Linux, or choose Uninstall… from the Mac app's menu. For anything else, email support@answersolutions.net.

Note: subscription billing is managed by Apple or Google. Unlinking or uninstalling does not cancel an active subscription. Cancel through the App Store or Google Play to stop further charges.