Keep a Kilo session moving from your phone (monitor + approvals + follow-ups)

Kilo is one of those CLIs that feels great when you’re at a keyboard.

But the sessions I actually care about tend to be the ones that take time:

dependency bumps
mechanical refactors
"touch 30 files" changes

And I don’t want the workflow to be “stay in a terminal until it finishes.”

This guide is how I run Kilo on a computer that has the repo, and then keep the session moving from my phone.

TL;DR

Install Kilo (kilo --version) on the computer that will run the session.
Authenticate Kilo using its /connect flow.
If Kilo auth status shows Unknown, that’s expected: Kilo auth probing is conservative.
If Kilo isn’t found, set HAPPIER_KILO_PATH to the absolute path of the kilo binary.
Use a phone-friendly session UI to monitor progress, handle approvals, and send follow-ups.

The problem

Kilo is a local CLI-backed provider.

That’s the whole appeal: your repo and tools are local.

But it also means:

the session lives on a specific computer
if that computer sleeps, the session stops
if you only have SSH, your phone becomes a terminal

So a good “phone workflow” is mostly about visibility + small interventions.

What I tried first (and where I bounced off)

SSH from phone
remote desktop
just waiting

Eventually I settled on a tighter loop: check, approve, nudge, and stop.

Happier: it gives me a phone UI to monitor the session, handle approvals, and send follow-ups. Trade-off: it still depends on the computer running the session being online.

If you’re new to Happier (what it is, and where to get it)

If you haven’t seen Happier before: it’s an open-source companion app (mobile/web/desktop) for coding sessions.

In this guide, the relevant idea is: Kilo runs on the computer that has the repo, and Happier is how you supervise from your phone without living in SSH.

Get set up:

GitHub: https://github.com/happier-dev/happier
Install/download: https://github.com/happier-dev/happier#how-it-works
Discord: https://discord.gg/W6Pb8KuHfg

Step 1: Install Kilo on the computer that will run the session

From the provider docs:

npm install -g @kilocode/cli@latest
kilo --version

If you use hstack:

hstack providers install kilo
kilo --version

(If you haven’t seen hstack before: it’s an optional helper in the Happier ecosystem that can install provider CLIs for you. You don’t need it — npm install -g ... is totally fine.)

Step 2: Authenticate Kilo (/connect)

Kilo supports launching its native login flow from provider settings.

The key detail in the docs is that Kilo uses a /connect flow.

So if you see “not authenticated,” you don’t need to guess — you run the connect flow and then re-check.

On the computer that will run the session:

Run kilo --version.
Run /connect (or start it from provider settings).
Start one tiny session and confirm you can send a follow-up.

Once that works once, you can stop thinking about auth.

Step 3: Understand why auth may show “Unknown”

In source, Kilo auth probing is marked as parser: 'unknown'.

That’s deliberate: it’s safer to show “Unknown” than to run a risky probe in the background.

So treat Unknown as “not probeable safely,” not “broken.”

Step 4: Fix Kilo detection with HAPPIER_KILO_PATH

If Kilo is installed but not detected:

confirm kilo --version works
then set HAPPIER_KILO_PATH to the absolute path

This override is exercised in CLI tests, so it’s implementation-true.

Step 5: The phone workflow

The best phone workflow I’ve found is intentionally simple:

open the session
check whether it’s waiting on approval
send one follow-up
leave

What I do from my phone (and what I don’t)

I’m comfortable doing this from a phone:

approve/deny a permission request after reading it
send short constraints (“stop after next step”, “summarize first”)
sanity-check what files changed

I avoid doing this from a phone:

big refactors
anything that needs lots of copy/paste
anything where I can’t verify the path/command

Three copy/paste follow-ups that work well for Kilo

Checkpoint

Stop after your next step and summarize:

what you changed

what you didn’t change

what you want to do next

Constraint

Don’t touch migrations/auth. If you think you need to, stop and ask.

Diff-first

Before you keep going, list the files you modified and why (one sentence each).

If I need real interactive terminal work, I wait for a keyboard.

If you’re new to Happier

If you haven’t seen Happier before: it’s an open-source companion app that lets you run sessions like Kilo on a computer and monitor them from your phone.

Get set up:

GitHub: https://github.com/happier-dev/happier
Install/download: https://github.com/happier-dev/happier#how-it-works
Discord: https://discord.gg/W6Pb8KuHfg

Troubleshooting

The session isn’t updating

confirm the computer is online and the session runtime is still running
check whether it’s waiting on approval
reload/reopen the session

Kilo auth shows “Unknown”

That’s expected. In source, Kilo auth probing is marked as parser: 'unknown'.

Treat it as “not safely probeable,” not “broken.”

Stop "waiting for approval"