Amp became my daily driver while building Cloky. After a week on the subscription, nothing else stuck.
Before Amp, I tried almost every AI coding TUI that shipped while I was building Cloky. I used Codex and Pi the most: Codex for its excellent Mac app, and Pi because it is the fastest, most optimized TUI I have used.
What won me over
The first thing was the TUI itself. It is stable, with no flickering or strange quirks. The modes are easy to understand, and Amp makes it simple to choose the right mode and model when the rest of the ecosystem feels overloaded with options.
The web app works just as well on macOS and iOS. Within a few days, most of my workflow had moved out of the terminal and into the web app on both devices.
How I set it up
To streamline development for macOS and iOS, I use a Mac mini as a dedicated home server alongside Orbs, Amp’s remote Linux environments.
I configured an Amp runner on the Mini with amp --no-tui. It has the latest Xcode simulators installed, and I completed the signing certificate setup manually. The machine now serves as both a home server and a dedicated development environment.
The runner stays online continuously. The Mini stays awake, with a terminal running in the background so I can monitor thread activity and troubleshoot over VNC when needed.
To speed things up further, I installed XcodeBuildMCP on the Mini and assigned each project its own iOS simulator. This prevents conflicts when I build multiple projects in parallel.
From an Orb to the Mac mini
From the web app, I start a new Orb whenever I need a Linux environment. When I need to verify a UI change, Amp starts a linked thread on the Mac mini. That thread handles the request and returns the results, including screenshots from the simulator.
I have made UI changes from my phone, watched the Mini build them in the simulator, and received the screenshots in the thread. The Amp mobile web app also lets me monitor the work while I am away from my desk.
Because threads can talk to one another, Amp coordinates work across the whole setup without requiring me to babysit each machine.
The Orb-to-Mac-runner workflow is optional. I can also start threads directly on the Mac runner: when I open a new thread, I choose the project, then select either an Orb or the Mac runner as the execution environment.