James Washington
writing about archive utils free game ideas replays
Technique

Taildrop pitfalls: false success and iOS jetsam

Sending files to your phone can say 'sent' when it wasn't, and big files can knock the phone off the network.

Reaching me on my phone

how it works

`tailscale file cp` exits 0 on failed delivery and offline phones look present; iOS network-extension memory floor grows with uptime, so toggle Tailscale before big transfers.

Technique: A pattern or hard-won lesson, written down so it isn't learned twice.

The code for this one lives in a private repo. This page explains the idea so you can build your own.

iostailscaletechnique

related

  • Taildropped one-shot HTML explainers (/tmp, ephemeral) Living document Phone-friendly, dark-mode HTML explainers that AI sessions make and beam straight to James's iPhone.
  • Session-summary HTML Taildropped to iPhone Living document At the end of a work session the AI writes a nicely formatted recap and sends it to James's phone.
  • Give phone-reachable URLs, never localhost Technique When the AI shares a link, it should be one that works from your phone.
  • Prefer device/remote auth flows over localhost OAuth Technique Logging in to tools should work when you're only holding your phone.
  • View local HTML on iPhone by serving it Technique iPhone's Files app won't run interactive web pages, so serve them from the computer instead.
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