# How Clair reaches your phone from anywhere

> Your laptop and your phone are rarely on the same network. This is how Clair gets a prompt from one to the other, sealed the whole way, through a relay that can't read it.

September 23, 2026 · Jeff Mixon

## Two devices, two networks

The laptop is on office Wi-Fi behind a firewall, the phone is on mobile data, and neither can accept a connection from the other. Nobody should have to open a port on their laptop to answer a permission prompt.

## Both ends dial out

Both ends connect out instead, over ordinary HTTPS, to a relay at relay.claircode.app. The agent on your computer posts what Claude Code sends and keeps a stream open for your answers. The phone does the same from its side.

When the phone is asleep, the relay asks Google's push service to wake it. That push names the pairing that has something waiting and nothing else. The phone wakes, fetches the message from the relay itself, and goes back to sleep when there's nothing left to do.

## Sealed before it leaves

A relay that every prompt passes through would be a good place to watch from, so this one is built to have nothing to see. The agent encrypts each prompt for your phone before it leaves your computer, and the phone encrypts your answer for the agent. In between, the relay stores sealed bytes, hands them over, and deletes them once they're collected, or after a day at most.

It can't read a command, a plan or an answer. It can't write one either: a message the relay altered, re-addressed or replayed fails to open at the other end.

## Pairing through your screen

The two ends still have to exchange keys, and doing that through the relay would let the relay swap in keys of its own. Clair pairs through your screen instead. `clair pair` shows a QR code that carries the computer's public key and a one-time secret. Your phone scans it, and the secret never touches the relay. When the computer can open the phone's first message, it knows the phone on the other end is the one that scanned its screen.

The remaining gap is someone photographing the code over your shoulder. Codes work once and expire after ten minutes, and the terminal names the phone that scanned it before pairing finishes. If your own phone finds the code already used, it says so, and `clair unpair` cleans up.

## What the relay does see

The relay knows which pairings exist, when they send and how much, the IP addresses the two ends connect from, and the push token that wakes your phone. It needs that much to deliver messages and to stop one pairing from flooding it for everyone else. What Claude Code asked and what you answered stay between your computer and your phone.

## Where it stands

The relay is running now, and Clair is getting ready for Google Play. The setup guide will carry the agent's installer as soon as it's published.

Canonical page: https://claircode.app/updates/how-clair-reaches-your-phone/