Question 1

What is Son of Anton?

Accepted Answer

Son of Anton (SoA) is an open-source browser-native terminal. The page at s0a.app streams real PTY shell sessions over WebSocket into xterm.js. Visitors can try a sandbox shell without installing; installing the desktop app gives the same browser UI access to real shells on their own machine.

Question 2

How is Son of Anton different from SSH or a cloud IDE?

Accepted Answer

SoA runs on your own machine, not on a vendor's server. There is no hosted compute, no account, and no code leaves your box unless you explicitly pair a phone, in which case the tunnel still terminates at your local machine. It is closer to 'your terminal in a browser tab' than to a cloud IDE.

Question 3

Why run Claude Code in a browser instead of in a native terminal?

Accepted Answer

So you can hand control to your phone. Pair once, and you can check or steer a long-running Claude Code task from anywhere. The tab color indicator shows green when Claude is working, breathing green when it is waiting on background subagents, amber when the task is finished, breathing red when it needs your input, and blue when idle.

Question 4

How does phone pairing work?

Accepted Answer

The desktop app opens a tunnel — cloudflared first, ngrok and localtunnel as fallbacks — and renders a QR code containing a one-time pairing token. Scanning the QR on a phone opens the web UI pointed at your machine through the tunnel, with the token pre-filled. No accounts, no central server.

Question 5

Is Son of Anton free?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Son of Anton is free and open source. Source on GitHub at SimonSaysGiveMeSmile/SoA-Web (web app) and SimonSaysGiveMeSmile/SoA-Prod (desktop).

Question 6

How do I install Son of Anton?

Accepted Answer

Run curl -fsSL https://www.s0a.app/install.sh | sh in your terminal. The web sandbox at s0a.app needs no install.

SON OF ANTON

Install the backend

Run the installer

✓ Connected

Web this page

Desktop installed

Phone paired

Other ways to install

SON OF ANTON

Can't reach the server

Give it a minute

Ask if it is up

Start it again

Tabs missing once it is back