I run a handful of small Linux servers. A few websites, a couple of APIs in Docker, a database. No on-call team, just me. And of course things tend to break when I'm not at my desk.

For years my "mobile setup" was a plain SSH app and a lot of careful typing. It works, but it's stressful. A phone keyboard has no Ctrl, no Esc, no Tab, and one typo in an nginx or sshd config can make a small problem a big one. I once locked myself out of a server while changing the SSH port from a train. That was the day I started building my own tool.

It turned into an Android app called VpsPilot. This post is less about the app and more about the way of working it pushed me into, because I think the habits are useful whatever you use.

A terminal that is actually usable on a phone

The first thing I needed was a terminal I didn't hate. VpsPilot has a key row above the keyboard with Esc, Ctrl, Alt, Tab, the arrows, Home and End, so Ctrl+C and Ctrl+R work like they do on a laptop.…