Inspiration
Every time I built a web app, I kept hitting the same wall: I needed to check how it looked on a real phone, but the ritual was brutal — reach for the phone, unlock it, open Chrome, type in the IP and port. Over and over. That interruption shattered the flow every single time. And for project files that weren't served by a dev server — Markdown notes, config files, static HTML — there was no URL to type at all. I wanted a tool that felt like a cable between my computer and my phone: plug in (same Wi-Fi), and instantly see everything running and everything stored on your dev machine. That's ProjectProbe.
What it does
Imagine you're on your couch. Your Mac is on the desk running a dev server. Pick up your phone, open ProjectProbe — your Mac appears automatically, the dev server is listed, and every project folder on your computer is right there. Tap a server → it opens in mobile Chrome. Tap a folder → browse files, read Markdown, preview HTML. No walking back to the desk, no typing IP addresses. It turns your phone into a direct window into your computer's development environment. The mobile app launches on Android first, with iOS support coming next.
How we built it
ProjectProbe is two apps: a mobile app and a macOS Companion. The mobile app scans the local network, discovers dev servers, and browses project directories — all in pure native code with no third-party libraries. The Mac Companion sits in the menu bar, quietly listing every port and every project folder, and exposes them to the phone via a simple API. The entire codebase was built with Codex — every component came from iterative prompting, from the port scanner to the Markdown viewer.
Challenges we ran into
The biggest challenge was port scanning strategy. There are 65535 ports on every machine — scanning all of them on a phone takes forever. Too slow and the tool is useless; too fast and you miss services. We had to design a multi-phase approach: scan 23 common dev ports first, then backfill two targeted ranges (1-1024 and 3000-10000) only on hosts that responded. Getting the timeouts, concurrency, and phase sequencing right took repeated testing against real Mac development environments.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
A mobile cross-platform developer tool that compiles, ships, and works — built entirely with AI. The mobile app is pure native code with zero third-party network dependencies. The Mac Companion requires zero configuration and sits silently in the menu bar. Together they solve a problem every developer faces: "I just built it on my computer, now how do I see it on my phone?"
What we learned
Building for yourself is the best product design: every feature exists because I personally needed it. Network scanning is a UX problem as much as a tech problem — scan time is the difference between useful and uninstalled. AI coding agents are surprisingly great at systems programming — complex components like the port scanner and HTTP prober worked from the first prompt.
What's next for ProjectProbe
The Android app is still in active development — once it stabilizes, the next step is refactoring the Java codebase into Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) so the mobile layer compiles natively to both Android and iOS. Also on the roadmap: project-aware browsing that detects framework structures like Vite and Next.js, and deeper integration with Codex to auto-detect what you're building.
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