worklifebalance

How do you close work tasks while swimming in a pool?

Turn on your computer, start worklifebalance, and go ride a bike. Send /new to the Telegram bot — get a link to control Claude Code on your machine. From your phone, from anywhere.

A lightweight wrapper over Claude Code's Remote Control mode. Nothing extra gets installed. It's just regular Claude Code. You can configure it for your workflow.

Close tasks while riding a bike or swimming in a pool. Sitting at your desk all day is no longer required.

How it works

1. You start the bot on your computer
2. Send /new my-app in Telegram
3. Bot spawns claude remote-control in the given directory
4. You get a claude.ai/code session link
5. Open it on your phone — full Claude Code, running on your machine
6. Status auto-updates in Telegram every 10 seconds

Commands

| Command | Description | |---------|-------------| | /new [dir] [name] | Start a session. dir is relative to DEFAULT_CWD. name is optional (auto-generated). | | /list | List all active sessions with URLs and uptime. | | /stop NAME | Stop a session by name. | | /stopall | Stop all active sessions. | | /status NAME | Show session status with auto-updates. |

Examples

/new                        # session in DEFAULT_CWD, random name
/new my-app            # session in DEFAULT_CWD/my-app, random name
/new my-app bugfix     # session in DEFAULT_CWD/my-app, name "bugfix"
/new /tmp/sandbox test      # absolute path, name "test"

Setup

Prerequisites

• Node.js >= 18
• Claude Code CLI installed and authenticated (claude --version)
• A Claude subscription (Max, Pro, or Team) with remote-control support

1. Create a Telegram bot

1. Open @BotFather in Telegram
2. Send /newbot, follow the prompts
3. Copy the bot token

2. Get your Telegram user ID

Send any message to @userinfobot — it replies with your user ID.

3. Find your Claude CLI path

which claude
# e.g. /Users/you/.local/bin/claude

4. Configure

cp .env.example .env

Edit .env:

TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=123456:ABC-DEF...
ALLOWED_USERS=123456789
DEFAULT_CWD=/home/you/projects
CLAUDE_PATH=/Users/you/.local/bin/claude

ALLOWED_USERS is a comma-separated list of Telegram user IDs. Only these users can interact with the bot. This is important — the bot runs sessions with --permission-mode bypassPermissions.

5. Install and run

npm install
npm run dev       # development (tsx)
# or
npm run build && npm start   # production

MCP servers

Claude Code loads MCP servers from ~/.claude.json based on the working directory. When the bot starts a session in /home/you/projects/my-app, Claude reads the MCP config for that project path.

Atlassian MCP: OAuth problem and fix

The default Atlassian MCP (https://mcp.atlassian.com/v1/mcp) uses OAuth. This works in local terminal sessions but fails in remote-control because the OAuth token doesn't transfer to the remote bridge. You'll see:

"You don't have permission to connect via API token."

Fix: replace the hosted OAuth MCP with mcp-atlassian — a local stdio MCP server that uses a Jira API token.

Step 1: Create a Jira API token

https://id.atlassian.com/manage-profile/security/api-tokens

Step 2: Install

# Install uv if you don't have it
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

# Verify
uvx mcp-atlassian --help

Step 3: Configure in ~/.claude.json

Find your project under projects and replace the atlassian MCP:

{
  "projects": {
    "/home/you/projects/my-app": {
      "mcpServers": {
        "atlassian": {
          "command": "uvx",
          "args": ["mcp-atlassian"],
          "env": {
            "JIRA_URL": "https://yourcompany.atlassian.net",
            "JIRA_USERNAME": "[email protected]",
            "JIRA_API_TOKEN": "your_api_token"
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Claude spawns it as a subprocess — no OAuth, no browser, works in remote-control.

| | Hosted (mcp.atlassian.com) | Local (mcp-atlassian) | |---|---|---| | Auth | OAuth (browser) | API token (env var) | | Transport | HTTP | stdio | | Remote-control | Fails | Works |

Other stdio-based MCP servers (context7, local tools, etc.) work out of the box.

Development

npm run dev      # run with tsx
npm test         # run tests (vitest)
npm run build    # compile typescript

Tests spawn real claude remote-control processes and verify URL capture.

Security

• ALLOWED_USERS is mandatory — the bot ignores unknown users
• Only works in private chats (not groups)
• Sessions run with --permission-mode bypassPermissions — only give access to trusted users
• Tokens are in .env and ~/.claude.json (never committed)

License

MIT