Run a chat on another computer and keep going

An agent is twenty minutes into a big refactor, the laptop says 9% battery, and the charger is in the other room. Or the job needs more memory than the laptop has. Or it's Friday evening and you'd like the work to keep going while the laptop goes in a bag.

The answer used to be "copy the repo to the big machine, open a terminal there, start over". We wanted it to be one click, and we didn't want a copy. So in Shuriken you can run a chat on another of your computers or servers: the same chat, with its history, settings and uncommitted work, and you follow it from wherever you are.

How it works#

Open the chat's menu and choose Run on…. The sheet that opens is called Run on another computer, and it says what happens in one line: "The chat moves with its history, settings and uncommitted work. It stays here in your list; only where it runs changes."

Pick a computer and the chat shows the move where its message box was, step by step:

1. if that computer doesn't have the project yet, it gets it from the project's remote first;
2. Shuriken packs the chat and copies its uncommitted changes across;
3. the chat starts there and the message box comes back.

It is not a copy sent away. The chat stays in your list with its history and its settings, and only the line that says where it runs changes. Send messages, queue up the next ones, watch Activity, all from your laptop, your phone or a browser. If the laptop dies, the chat doesn't care: it's running somewhere else.

If the agent is in the middle of a turn, you don't have to wait for it. Pick the computer anyway and the chat says it moves when this turn finishes, then goes by itself. If the move fails, or the other computer goes offline halfway, the chat and its work stay where they were.

Or pick the computer when you start#

A new chat that works on its own branch can start somewhere else from the beginning. The New chat screen shows the device it will run on; press Change and pick another computer or server that is online. That computer clones the project's repository (or fetches it, if it already has a copy) and the chat starts there on its own branch.

When that work is done, press Finish. It commits, rebases and runs your checks over there, then sends the branch back to the computer the project lives on and merges it there. If that computer is asleep at that moment, the finish waits for it and tells you when it's merged.

Both ways have one condition. A computer that doesn't have the project needs a git remote to get it from, so a project with no remote stays on the one computer that has it, and the picker says so. (Replacing a computer for good is a different job: what to copy from ~/.claude so Claude Code keeps its settings and history is in moving Claude Code to a new computer, and the history-only steps cover a project whose path changed.)

Why you'd want this#

We use it for three things.

• The laptop is about to die, or about to go in a bag. Move the long job to the desktop at home, mid-task, and close the lid.
• The job needs a bigger machine. A full test suite, a monorepo build, five agents at once: give it the computer with the cores and the memory.
• The work should never sleep. A server keeps going at 3 a.m. without anyone keeping a lid open. (If you'd rather keep your own laptop working with the lid closed, that's what Cocaine mode is for on a Mac. Yes, that's its name.)

Your sources travel with you, end-to-end encrypted, and so do your global MCP sign-ins. So automatic source switching works on the server exactly as it does on your laptop.

Adding a server takes a minute#

A server is any always-on machine running Shuriken without a screen: a Linux box, a spare Mac mini, a Windows PC under the desk. You add it from the app:

1. Open Settings › Devices › Add device and choose A server.
2. Pick its system: Linux, macOS or Windows. The app gives you install steps made for your account, valid for an hour.
3. Run them on the server. It joins your account by itself and shows up in your devices.

The installer also sets up the agent CLIs and the GitHub sign-in, and says which step it's on. After that, the server runs as a service, restarts on its own, and updates itself only to signed releases, waiting until no agent is in the middle of a turn. More on the server page, and in our guide to running Claude Code on an always-on machine.

One project, several computers#

On 19 October, Shuriken 4.0 went a step further. A GitHub project can now be worked on from several of your computers: Shuriken uses whichever one is online and keeps them in sync. Running a single chat elsewhere is still the quickest way to borrow a bigger machine for one job, and the two fit together well.

On the Free plan, a server counts as one of your two linked devices. Browsers never count.

If you've got a second machine gathering dust, this is a good use for it. Try Shuriken, set it up on both and choose Run on….