On the phone
With remote access, the phone shows the whole canvas. Custom cards are the one exception to “everything works the same”: the phone never runs card code. Community code gets one sandbox, on the computer, not a second, weaker one in a phone browser.
What the phone shows for a custom card:
- the header — icon, title, status chip and badge, exactly as your card set them;
- the overview content you set with
card.setOverview()— at every zoom level, not only when zoomed out; - the line “Open on the computer to use this card”.
What keeps working while someone watches from the phone: everything that runs on the computer. Tools that agents call, ports that deliver data, prompts and commands all run in the card’s page on the desktop — as long as the card’s workspace is open there (a suspended card is woken on demand, as usual).
The phone cannot install, update, grant permissions, link folders or answer a card’s dialogs: all of that is blocked over remote access and needs the computer.
Design for it
- Make the overview tell the story.
primaryis the one fact (3 failing,Deploy ready,Waiting for review),secondarythe detail,progressa bar,tonethe colour,iconfrom the host icons. Update it whenever that fact changes. - Use the status chip and badge for what should be visible at a glance.
- Use
card.attention('needs-input', …)when the user must act — the card pulses and is listed in the Inbox. - Do not rely on the card’s page for anything urgent: the phone user cannot see or click it.
In version 1 there is no way to run your card’s page on the phone.