# Watch and steer from your phone Turn on Borago Board cloud sync, open the board in your phone's browser, and start a task, answer the agent and restart a container from the phone. Borago Board runs its agent on your computer. With cloud sync on, the same board opens in your phone's browser, and the phone can reach back to the desktop for the work only the desktop can do. This tutorial sets that up and then drives one task from the phone, from writing it to answering the agent's question, with a container restart and a terminal on the way. There is no app in the app stores. The phone uses its browser at board.boragosoft.com. ## You will build The desktop signed in to your account with cloud sync on, the phone signed in to the same account in its browser, and one task written, queued and answered from the phone while the desktop runs it. At the end you will see what the phone shows when the desktop is not there. ## You need - The desktop app with a project whose container runs and a working provider, see [Getting started in ten minutes](/docs/guides/getting-started/). - A phone with a current browser, and an email address you can read now. - Cloud sync is part of a paid plan, with a free 30-day trial that starts when the account is created, with no card. Plans are on the [pricing page](/pricing/). The AI provider still bills you for the runs. ## Steps ### 1. Create an account In any browser, open board.boragosoft.com and press **Create one** under the sign-in form. Enter your email and press **Send verification code**. Enter the six-digit code from the email and press **Verify**. Set a **Password** of at least 8 characters, tick **I confirm I am 18 years of age or older**, and press **Create account**. What happens. The account is created, the trial starts, and you are signed in. The cloud board is empty until the desktop syncs. ### 2. Turn on cloud sync on the desktop On the desktop, open Settings from the gear in the top bar, then **Account**. Switch on **Cloud sync**, fill in the email and password, and press **Sign in**. If the account has two-factor sign-in, enter the code and press **Verify**. Press **Save** at the bottom of Settings. The status line changes to **Connected** with the time of the last sync. What happens. The first sign-in claims the projects already on this desktop for the account and pushes them up. From then on changes reach the cloud within seconds, and the desktop keeps a connection to the cloud open, called the relay, so the phone can ask it to do things. One desktop is linked per account. ### 3. Optional, sign the desktop in with a code instead of the password Instead of typing the password in step 2, press **Sign in with your browser or phone instead** under the sign-in fields. The desktop shows a short code and a QR code, and opens your browser at the cloud board. In that browser, signed in to the account, a dialog headed **Sign in your desktop app?** shows the same code. Check the two codes match and press **Approve**. From the phone instead, once it is signed in as in step 5, open the menu, choose **Link desktop app**, and scan the QR code. It lands on the same dialog. Press **Save** in the desktop's Settings once it reads **Signed in.** What happens. The code works the other way round from a phone sign-in code. The desktop shows it, and a session that is already signed in approves it, so the desktop never sees the password. The code is single-use and expires after a few minutes. Press **Deny** if the codes differ or you did not start this. Synced secrets, such as saved keys, stay locked on that desktop until you sign in there once with the password. Everything else works at once. ### 4. Keep the desktop awake If Settings says **The computer may sleep while connected to the cloud**, press **Keep it awake**, then **Save**. What happens. A desktop that sleeps takes its relay down with it. The phone then reads and edits the board, but nothing runs until the desktop wakes. ### 5. Sign in on the phone On the phone, open board.boragosoft.com in the browser and sign in with the same email and password, plus the authenticator code if two-factor sign-in is on. What happens. The board is the same one. The columns sit side by side and scroll sideways. A tap opens a card, and a press and hold starts a drag. The **Open menu** button in the top bar opens a drawer with the project picker and every project control as a labelled row. The session lasts 30 days and renews itself while you use it. ### 6. Pick the project and write a task Open the menu and choose the project. In the **Planning** column press **Add task**. Paste the title and description below. If the form shows **Review this task after saving**, untick it so the only question comes from the run. Press **Add task**. Title: ``` Add a short README section about colours ``` Description: ``` Before changing anything, ask me which accent colour the project should use, offering blue and green as the choices. Then add a section named "Colours" to the README that states the chosen colour in one sentence. ``` What happens. The task is saved to the cloud at once and syncs to the desktop within seconds. It sits in Planning, which the queue never picks up. ### 7. Move it to To Do Tap the card to open it and press **Move to Todo**. When the To Do column is on screen beside it, you can instead press and hold the card and drag it there. What happens. To Do is what the desktop's queue picks up. The move syncs to the desktop, and its queue starts the task once it has no other run in progress for this project. Runs happen only on the desktop, never in the cloud and never on the phone. ### 8. Watch the desktop run it Stay on the board. The card moves to **In Progress** with a spinner and a timer counting the run. The same happens on the desktop's screen. What happens. The desktop runs the task inside the project container and syncs its progress back. The timer counts from when the run started, so it reads correctly on the phone even if the phone's page was opened later. From the task dialog on the phone, **Stop** asks the desktop to end the run. ### 9. Answer the question from the phone The run stops to ask which colour. The card gets a violet border and moves to **Blocked**, or stays in In Progress if the task was open somewhere at that moment, and a notice about the question appears in the bell. Tap the card. In the comments, the question is a card tagged **Question** with the badge **Awaiting your answer**, and one button per choice. Tap the button for the colour you want. What happens. The comment turns green and reads **Answered:** with your choice. When every question on a task is answered, the task moves back to To Do by itself, and the desktop's queue runs it again. There is no session resume, so the new run starts from the task text, the previous output and your answer. The answer is accepted on the phone even with the desktop asleep. It syncs, and the desktop acts on it when it next connects. ### 10. Restart the container from the menu Open the menu. The container controls sit in a row of icons. Tap the blue circular arrow, labelled **Restart container** for screen readers. The icon spins while the restart runs. What happens. The phone asks the desktop, over the relay, to recreate the container. When the project keeps its work only inside the container and there are uncommitted changes, a warning asks first, because a recreate discards them. The same warning appears on every surface. A failure is printed as a sentence in the drawer, since a phone cannot hover a tooltip to read one. ### 11. Open a terminal In the menu, tap **Terminal**. A terminal panel opens over the board with a shell inside the project container. Type `ls` and press Enter to see the project's files. What happens. The shell runs on the desktop. The phone's keystrokes and the shell's output travel over the relay. Closing the panel hides the session rather than ending it, and **Terminal (connected)** in the menu shows a shell is still open. The tab's close button ends it. ### 12. See the phone with the desktop away Quit the desktop app, or let the computer sleep. After a short while, the controls whose work happens on the desktop turn dim on the phone. Open the menu and tap **Containers**. What happens. A control that needs the desktop is never hidden, because a missing button reads as a missing feature. It stays on screen, dimmed, and a tap shows the reason instead of acting: **Your desktop app is not connected. Open it (with cloud sync on) to use this.** Reading and editing the board, writing tasks, moving cards, answering questions, notes and the bell all keep working. A card moved to To Do waits until the desktop is back. Open the desktop app again and the controls come back within seconds. ## Check it worked The task is in **Done** on both the phone and the desktop. The README in the project has a **Colours** section naming the colour you tapped. The task's comments show the question with your answer. The bell on the phone and on the desktop shows the same notices, and reading one on either clears it on both. ## Where to go next - [Cloud sync, browser and phone](/docs/guides/cloud-sync-browser-and-phone/) covers two-factor sign-in, what syncs and what never does. - [When the agent asks a question or needs you](/docs/guides/questions-and-actions/) covers questions and action notes in full. - [Cloud, phone and what needs the desktop online](/docs/for-ai/cloud-phone-and-the-desktop/) lists every control and where it runs. Related: [Cloud sync, browser and phone](/docs/guides/cloud-sync-browser-and-phone/), [When the agent asks a question or needs you](/docs/guides/questions-and-actions/), [The terminal, scripts and the file browser](/docs/guides/terminal-scripts-and-files/), [The relay](/docs/reference/relay/), [Notifications](/docs/guides/notifications/)