Docs/Gateway/More than one machine
Gateway

Running agents on more than one machine

3 min read

A fleet is one Gateway plus every Director that reports to it - and Directors can live on different computers. Your desktop runs the Gateway; your laptop runs its own sessions; the Fleet Map shows it all as one board, and your phone reaches everything through the one Gateway.

Adding another machine

  1. Install DevThrottle on it

    The second machine runs the same app - install and sign in as usual.

  2. Point it at your Gateway

    During setup, connect it to the Gateway you already run instead of making it its own island. By default machines reach each other over your Tailscale network; on a trusted home network you can switch a machine to direct LAN addressing in the Cockpit's This machine settings.

  3. Watch it appear

    The new machine's Director registers with the Gateway and shows up on the Cockpit's Directors page and the Fleet Map, with its sessions in the shared roster. Machine health shows as Online, Wobbly, or Offline - an unreachable machine dims in place, never disappears.

Screenshot coming soonThe Cockpit Directors page listing registered machines with status, session counts, version, and last seen
The Cockpit Directors page listing registered machines with status, session counts, version, and last seen

Starting work on the other machine

From anywhere in the fleet, a session can be started on a specific machine:

  • From the phone: the New session screen lists every machine - pick one, pick a repo.
  • From a terminal or an agent: cc-devthrottle session spawn <repo> --machine <name>. If no Director is running there, the Gateway launches one - and if the machine is unreachable you get a clear error, never a silent local fallback.
Tip
The Start the Gateway when I log in setting (Cockpit, This machine) keeps the hub up without thinking about it. The fleet runs while you are logged in - it is per-user, never a machine-wide service.
Note
Advanced: a small helper (cc-launcher) can register with the Gateway so it can start, stop, or restart that machine's Director remotely over the Gateway's API - with the main build and protected slots guarded behind an explicit human confirmation. There is no button for this yet; it is an API-level capability for people scripting their fleet.