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#0787
Terminal

Remote hands, without the remote desktop

The contractor is stuck at an interactive prompt on the staging box and you're on a phone in a taxi. The TeamViewer version of this story involves an install, a nine-digit code, and full control of their screen: for one keystroke.

The Hoody version is two HTTP calls. GET /api/v1/terminal/raw?format=text&tail=40 shows you the last forty lines of their session. POST /api/v1/terminal/write with {"input": "y"} types into the PTY exactly as if you were at the keyboard: prompts, passwords, anything stdin takes. You read, you type, you're out.

Remote assistance used to mean surrendering a screen to software. Now it means reading one URL and writing another.

Taking the keyboard is a POST request.