Put Your AI Agent on Your Phone

Agent on the laptop. Screens on the phone.

You've got an agent. Maybe it lives in your terminal, maybe it answers you on Telegram. It's smart. It's also stuck talking in paragraphs.

Yui is an iPhone app that gives that agent a screen. You ask for a workout, you get a timer. It asks you a question, you get buttons. The Vibe Jam founder is building it in public, and the alpha is open to anyone.

This is a hack-night-sized job. Here's the whole path.

What you need

• An iPhone on iOS 26.
• An agent you already run. Hermes is the main path. Others work too, more on that below.
• About five minutes, if your agent already answers you somewhere.

Yui has no AI of its own in the alpha. A new account stays quiet until you connect one. That's the point: it's the screen, the brains are yours.

Step 1: install the app and get a code

Open the public TestFlight link on your iPhone. The app is listed as Yui Gui. Install it, then sign in with Apple. No invite, no waitlist, no password to make up.

Tap Add your first agent, give it a name, then tap Get a pairing code. The code works once, for 10 minutes. The app shows the next commands with your code already filled in.

Step 2: install the plugin

On the computer that runs Hermes:

hermes plugins install postscarcityai/yui/hermes-plugin/yui --enable

No Hermes yet? Install it first, pick a model, then come back:

curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash

Step 3: pair and restart

Swap in your own code:

hermes yui pair 123456
hermes gateway restart

The app flips to "connected" on its own. Tap Say hi.

The full walkthrough lives at yuigui.com/start.

Not on Hermes? The start page has a door for OpenClaw, Claude and ChatGPT as a custom connector, Claude Code or Cursor through the MCP server, an A2A agent, a model on your own machine like Ollama, and a webhook bridge for anything that answers an HTTP POST. Each one starts with the same six-digit code.

The first three screens worth asking for

Once it's connected, don't ask your agent for an essay. Ask for something you'd tap.

A timer, a checklist, a choice. Each one is a single line from the agent.

1. A timer. "Give me a Tabata: 40 on, 20 off, 8 rounds." You get a full-screen timer with a Start button, not a paragraph telling you to go find your clock app.

2. A checklist. "What's my plan for today? Make it a checklist." You get rows you can tick as you go.

3. A choice. "Ask me what I want to train, with buttons." You get the buttons. Tap one. Change your mind and tap another; the agent hears that too.

Want to see exactly what your agent will send before you pair anything? Every one of those screens came from one short line in the playground. No account needed.

If it gets stuck

Straight from the help page:

• "Waiting to connect." Run hermes yui status. Not paired? Run the pair step again. Paired? The gateway isn't running, or it wasn't restarted after pairing.
• "invalid_or_expired_code." The code ran out or was used. Tap the agent in the app for a fresh one.
• Agent shows offline. Its gateway stopped. Run hermes gateway restart on that computer. Messages you sent wait and arrive when it's back.

Good to know: the plugin dials out. It opens no ports on your machine, and your agent keeps its own memory and tools.

What's new, and how to help

The latest release post, Yui 0.5.0: the crew feels ready, is worth a skim. Hold the button to snap a photo and say what's in it. Send a plate of food and get a meal logged without a scale.

It's an alpha. The site puts it plainly: it works, and it will change. If something feels off, take a screenshot and use Share Beta Feedback in TestFlight. It goes straight onto the public board.

No iPhone? You can still play in the playground, or lend your idle agent to help build it.

Pair up at hack night: one person with the phone, one with the laptop. Bring a laptop. Build something.