Best tools to control AI agents in 2026

Pushary is a cross-vendor control plane for AI agents. You set one per-tool policy (auto-approve safe reads, push on Bash, escalate git push, always deny rm -rf), approve only what matters from your phone over web push, and keep an immutable, exportable audit trail of every decision. It sends the decision, not your code, and works with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Hermes, Windsurf, and any MCP client, on any OS, with no native app.

Best for: Individuals and teams who want guardrails plus a record across more than one agent, on any platform.

Anthropic ships Remote Control inside the Claude iOS and Android apps, so you can start and steer Claude Code sessions from your phone, get notified, and review diffs. It is polished and free, but it is Claude-only and needs a Claude Max subscription. It does not touch Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, or Hermes, and there is no per-tool policy engine or cross-agent audit trail.

Best for: Claude Max subscribers who only run Claude Code and want first-party phone control.

OpenAI's Codex has a mobile experience that notifies you when a cloud task finishes and lets you approve blockers from your phone. It is free with a ChatGPT plan, but it is centered on Codex and OpenAI's cloud tasks. There is no per-tool policy across other agents and no exportable cross-agent audit trail.

Best for: ChatGPT and Codex users who want first-party notifications for Codex tasks.

Happy is a free, open-source (MIT) app that mirrors your Claude Code and Codex session to your phone or the web, end-to-end encrypted, with parallel sessions and voice. You run the happy CLI instead of claude or codex. Approvals are manual and session-scoped, and the end-to-end encryption means there is no server-side audit trail to export.

Best for: Anyone who wants a free, private, full-session mirror and does not need policy or audit.

Omnara is a command center that mirrors Claude Code and Codex to native apps, web, and CLI through a daemon on your machine. It adds parallel worktrees, two-way voice, and cloud failover. It streams session content, including code and diffs, to its backend, is not end-to-end encrypted yet, and approvals are manual with no per-tool policy engine.

Best for: People who want an IDE-grade remote control of the whole session, with voice and parallel worktrees.

HumanLayer started as a human-in-the-loop SDK that developers embed in their own agents, routing approvals to Slack and email. It has pivoted to CodeLayer, an open-source IDE built on Claude Code. There is no dedicated mobile approval app, and access is via a waitlist with no public pricing.

Best for: Builders embedding approvals into their own agents, or teams ready to adopt a new IDE.

Conductor is a free, Mac-only desktop app that runs many Claude Code and Codex agents in parallel, each in an isolated git worktree, with first-class diff review and merge. Approvals are manual desktop prompts, so you have to be at the Mac. There is no mobile surface, no per-tool policy engine, and no audit log.

Best for: Mac users who want to run many agents in parallel at their desk.

Claude Code Notifier is a macOS menu bar app, with companion iOS and Android apps, that notifies you when Claude Code needs input or finishes, and can forward to Slack and Discord. It is Claude-only, with no human-in-the-loop questions and no policy engine, and keeps data on your device.

Best for: Claude-only users on macOS who want lightweight, private local notifications.

Forge Remote is an iOS and Android app that streams and controls desktop Claude Code, Aider, and Codex CLI sessions from your phone. You install a relay, pair by QR, and approve or deny each tool action with a Low-to-Critical risk badge. It runs on your own Firebase project, so data stays in infrastructure you control. Approvals are per action, and we did not find a documented author-once policy engine or exportable audit trail.

Best for: Solo devs who want a native app with a risk score on every action and their data in their own Firebase.

Onepilot is an iPhone-native agentic IDE and SSH terminal that deploys and controls coding agents on any server you reach over SSH. It works with Claude Code, Codex, Hermes, and custom frameworks, keeps credentials in the iOS Keychain, and lets you approve, interrupt, or redirect agents from your phone. It is free to start with your own server and API key, and is iOS-only with no per-tool policy engine or audit trail we could verify.

Best for: SSH-heavy developers who want to deploy and run agents on their own server from an iPhone.

AgentsRoom runs many agents across projects on your desktop and mirrors the sessions to an end-to-end-encrypted iOS and Android companion app, where you can respond to prompts and approve actions. It supports Claude, Codex, Aider, OpenCode, and more, with a library of agent roles. It is free up to three projects and $9.99 a month for unlimited. It is full-session mirroring rather than a per-tool policy engine, and has no exportable audit trail we could verify.

Best for: Solo devs and small teams orchestrating a fleet of agents with full-session mobile mirroring.

Cosyra gives you a persistent cloud Ubuntu box on your phone with Claude Code, Codex CLI, OpenCode, and Gemini CLI pre-installed, so agents keep running with your laptop closed. You bring your own LLM key and pay for compute, from a free hour to $29.99 a month. You can approve permissions and review diffs from the phone, but it is cloud-hosted rather than local-first, with no per-tool policy engine or audit trail we could verify.

Best for: Developers who want a persistent cloud Linux dev environment driven entirely from a phone.

LeCoder MConnect is an open-source (MIT) layer that turns your laptop into a multi-agent server you control from an iOS app, pairing over a Cloudflare tunnel with no port forwarding. It reaches more than seven CLI agents including Claude, Cursor, Codex, and Gemini. The core is free and self-hostable, with a hosted tier at $20 a month. It focuses on remote access and monitoring rather than a per-tool approval policy or exportable audit trail.

Best for: Developers who want a free, open-source, self-hostable way to reach all their CLI agents from a phone.

Fleetify (fleetify.dev) is a local-first desktop command center that orchestrates many coding agents in one window, with live per-tool-call cost pricing, spend caps, and one-click approve or deny gates on risky operations. It works with Claude, Codex, Gemini, Cursor, Devin, and more, and is free to start. Control is at the desktop, with no phone surface, and no per-tool policy engine or audit trail we could verify.

Best for: Developers running many agents at once who want live cost control and destructive-op gating from one screen.