remote-mac

Remote Mac

Use when the user says MacBook, Mac Studio, clawmac, foundationclaw, foundationmac, megaclaw, miniclaw, Molty, Tailscale, or asks to run/check something on one of Peter's Macs.

Peter's Topology

• Primary workstation for interactive approvals and day-to-day work: Peter's SF Mac Studio, local/Tailscale name steipete-studio-sf. Peter's MacBook Pro (steipete-mbp) is the portable/fallback workstation; do not route prompts there merely because it is online.
• London workhorse: Mac Studio, Tailscale peters-mac-studio-1, usually best reached as steipete@steipete-macstudio.local when on its LAN.
• SF primary workstation: steipete-studio-sf. Its current Tailscale target and retired-node state live in private manager computers.yaml; do not choose a peer merely because it appears online.
• clawstudio is the separate SF data server and personal OpenClaw Gateway host, formerly mac-studio-sf2. Its exact current peer IDs, addresses, hardware identity, and reconciliation state live only in private manager inventory and docs/tailnet-portal.md. If multiple peers appear, pin each backend command, verify the physical host locally, preserve a rollback path, and follow the private reconciliation gate. Do not publish or copy the private topology into public runbooks.
• SF Mini: local/Tailscale name steipete-mini-sf. Its current kernel and retired GUI targets live in private manager inventory. The Mini uses classic key-only OpenSSH over the tailnet TCP 22 grant because GUI Tailscale builds cannot host Tailscale SSH. Its own key is installed on both SF Studios, MegaClaw, and MiniClaw; see private manager docs/fleet-setup.md for live proof and offline/provider-blocked directions. Do not confuse it with FoundationClaw.
• Personal cloud OpenClaw: clawmac (Peter may typo/say crabmac), MacStadium service 100121942, Tailscale/SSH steipete@clawmac, gateway via LaunchAgent ai.openclaw.gateway, loopback 127.0.0.1:18789, Telegram connected. The current 2026-08-01 provider network outage is tracked by Atlanta remote hands on tickets #11481/#11484; one hard reboot restored SSH only briefly, so do not repeat power cycles.
• Network split:
  • corporate: Peter's work-managed environment. Treat Mac Studio as the main remote Mac to configure and inspect there.
  • personal: Peter's personal LAN / personal cloud environment, including clawmac.
• Network boundary: clawmac and the personal LAN are unreachable from Peter's corporate Mac. Never use clawmac as a relay or LAN vantage from there.
• Molty's former Mac Studio gateway is retired and must remain disabled; real Molty runs separately on Hetzner. Do not use the old Mac Studio runtime as a healthy-state expectation.
• megaclaw: Virtualized.gg product 22 (Mac Studio M4 Max, Phoenix), the active alternate Mac worker. Tailscale/SSH steipete@megaclaw. No OpenClaw gateway by design; the personal Gateway runs on clawstudio. Do not configure or start one on megaclaw.
• miniclaw: Virtualized.gg product 24 (Mac mini M4 Pro, Phoenix), public SSH steipete@131.143.4.3. Live 2026-08-01 state regressed: the privileged Homebrew daemon owns stale duplicate miniclaw-1 and cannot reach coordination, while canonical miniclaw is unusable. Use public SSH until the stored personal admin credential is explicitly authorized for a privileged repair; do not claim the canonical tailnet path is healthy from provider SSH alone.
• foundationclaw: MacStadium service 100124960, M2.L in Atlanta, public address recorded in computers.yaml. Provider SSH verified a Mac14,12 M2 Pro Mac mini, hardware UUID, and the administrator admin account; its canonical local hostname is foundationclaw. Signed Tailscale and Jump Desktop Connect v10 are installed, but the previously working provider credential stopped authenticating and a data-preserving reset is pending on ticket #11386 before Tailscale enrollment and first-run GUI permissions can continue. Do not merge it with the separate SF Mini.

Non-Mac fleet nodes (full detail in computers.yaml):

• gorillaclaw: personal Ubuntu Linux node at GorillaServers (Los Angeles), Tailscale 100.93.99.79; SSH user steipete.
• steipetesurface: Peter's personal Windows Surface, Tailscale 100.118.219.64, SSH user steip. Corporate Windows laptop CPC-steip-11ENO is separate and work-managed.

Not Peter's Macs (do not configure/brand as his):

• crabhammer: Scaleway M4-XL given to vince; on Peter's tailnet + billing but provisioned for vince (no SSH access). Listed under handed_off: in computers.yaml.

Manager repo source of truth (canonical inventory of all nodes, Mac and non-Mac):

• /Users/steipete/Projects/manager/computers.yaml
• /Users/steipete/Projects/manager/agents.yaml

Discovery

1. Start with live tailscale status --json; match hostname/DNS name and use the node's current IP. Manager-cached Tailscale IPs may be stale.
2. If one physical Mac exposes multiple Tailscale peers, do not choose by Active, PATH order, process name, or IP age. Verify ComputerName, LocalHostName, hardware UUID, stable node ID, and backend-pinned status. On clawstudio, macsys is /Applications/Tailscale.app/Contents/MacOS/Tailscale; Homebrew kernel requires /opt/homebrew/bin/tailscale --socket=/var/run/tailscaled.socket. Preserve a proven fallback or timed automatic reconnect before stopping either backend.
3. For rented Macs, reconcile the live identity with the provider service/product record in computers.yaml. Provider-active does not mean fleet-configured, and a public IP alone is not enough to merge identities.
4. For clawmac, if MacStadium reports Active while the public IP, SSH/VNC, and Tailscale all fail, treat it as a provider network/hardware incident. Check the current incident note in computers.yaml, update the existing ticket, and request console, NIC-link, and switch-port inspection. Do not repeat hard reboots or authorize reimage, erase, reinstall, storage replacement, credential resets, or other data-affecting work without Peter's approval.
5. In the corporate environment, default to Mac Studio for remote configuration work. Reach it through its live Tailscale node. MagicDNS may be disabled; use the current TailscaleIPs[0] directly. Do not try clawmac, mDNS, or personal-LAN discovery from there.
6. In the personal environment, if Tailscale is down or SSH times out, try LAN discovery:

dns-sd -B _ssh._tcp local
arp -a

7. Try mDNS names such as HOST.local only when on the same LAN.
8. If Mac Studio's live Tailscale node is offline from the corporate environment, stop: it must wake or reconnect before SSH or Screen Sharing diagnosis can continue.

SSH Rules

Use non-interactive SSH by default:

ssh -o RequestTTY=no -o RemoteCommand=none HOST 'COMMAND'

The local SSH alias mac-studio auto-attaches tmux. For one-shot commands, either use steipete@steipete-macstudio.local or override both options above.

For long-running or interactive remote work, use tmux on the remote host and keep the session name obvious.

OpenClaw Checks

Use login shells on remote Macs so Homebrew and pnpm are on PATH:

ssh -o RequestTTY=no -o RemoteCommand=none steipete@steipete-macstudio.local \
  'zsh -lc "openclaw gateway status --json; openclaw channels status --json"'

clawstudio healthy shape:

• Use the immutable manager-owned runtime, not a global openclaw binary: ~/.local/share/openclaw-clawstudio/run-current gateway status --deep --require-rpc --json.
• lsof -nP -iTCP:18789 -sTCP:LISTEN shows the immutable release listener on *:18789.
• The tailnet portal and Gateway are separate health layers. Prove deep Gateway RPC and tailnet HTTPS independently; one can remain healthy while the other is unavailable.
• Never start gateway:watch, restart the Gateway, or alter its release while repairing Tailscale.

The London Studio's former Molty gateway remains retired and disabled; real Molty runs separately on Hetzner.

clawmac healthy shape:

• launchctl list includes ai.openclaw.gateway.
• lsof -nP -iTCP:18789 -sTCP:LISTEN shows loopback listeners.
• openclaw channels status --json shows Telegram connected.

Codex Automations

• Codex cron automations are host-local scheduler state, not generic cloud jobs.
• In the corporate environment, configure or mirror those automations on Mac Studio unless Peter says otherwise.
• Treat ~/.codex/automations/<automation-id>/automation.toml on the target host as the source of truth for the scheduled job definition on that machine.
• If the goal is to move a cron automation from Peter's current corporate machine to Mac Studio, do the machine work on Mac Studio:
  • ensure the intended repo checkout exists there
  • sync the required repo-local policy files
  • create or update the matching ~/.codex/automations/... entry on Mac Studio
  • disable or pause the old corporate-host copy if Peter wants only one runner
• Do not assume Codex app thread handoff moves cron scheduler ownership; thread movement and cron ownership are separate.

clawmac GUI Access

• If computers.yaml records a provider network outage and public SSH/VNC plus Tailscale are all unreachable, GUI access is unavailable too. Continue through the existing MacStadium remote-hands ticket; do not power-cycle the host again.
• Prefer direct clawmac automation over Tailscale/SSH first: open -a "Google Chrome", AppleScript, Chrome DOM JavaScript, and remote Peekaboo clicks.
• For gog OAuth on clawmac, keep the browser on clawmac. Start gog auth add in remote tmux, open the printed URL on clawmac Chrome, click consent with AppleScript/DOM automation, then verify with zsh -lc 'gog auth list --check --json --no-input'.
• If GOG_KEYRING_PASSWORD is exported by the remote shell environment, use the matching login shell for checks and tmux prompt feeding, and never print the value.
• If SSH/cron hits GUI-only prompts that direct automation cannot handle, use local Peekaboo through Jump Desktop's clawmac window as fallback.
• Find it with peekaboo list windows --app "Jump Desktop" --json; capture by --window-title clawmac or the reported --window-id.
• Clicks use local global coordinates through the Jump Desktop window; verify with a raw window screenshot before clicking.
• Chrome cookie/keychain issues: security may prompt for Chrome Safe Storage; Peter must enter the login keychain password, then click Always Allow.
• After approval, verify over SSH with /Users/steipete/Projects/bird/bird check and /Users/steipete/.openclaw/bin/bird-gui check.

Live Testing Policy (OpenClaw)

• Default for live tests on any of Peter's Macs: session-owned dev gateway — isolated OPENCLAW_STATE_DIR scratch dir + free port. Never bind 18789 while a real gateway runs; never launchctl kickstart/bootout/bootstrap or openclaw gateway stop/restart a service this session did not start.
• clawmac = PRODUCTION. Any restart/stop, config/state write under ~/.openclaw, or live test against its gateway needs explicit per-task approval from Peter in chat. One approval = one task, never standing.
• Any shared Mac Studio gateway or dev-watch session is semi-production: same approval rule; never stop a tmux session this task did not start.
• Tunnel footgun (megaclaw AND Peter's MacBook Pro): 127.0.0.1:18789 on those hosts is an SSH tunnel into clawmac — "localhost" tests there hit production. Same approval rule applies. Neither host runs a local gateway service.
• DB/state for testing or migration rehearsal: production copies need explicit per-task approval naming the destination and handling. Work only on the approved copy; writing back or migrating production in place needs separate approval.
• Heavier cross-machine/OS live E2E routes through $crabbox, not Peter's personal gateways.

Safety

• Do not assume host identity from a stale IP; verify hostname/user when possible.
• Do not print secrets from remote files or shells.
• If a host is unavailable after Tailscale + LAN fallback, say what was tried.
• For OpenClaw Gateway on Peter's machines, follow repo docs/AGENTS; do not install/start/stop services unless asked.