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Remote Mac Operator

Lets an agent find, check, and run commands on Peter Steinberger's Macs over Tailscale and SSH

Source Download skill
Repository
steipete/agent-scripts
Stars
7,433
Licence
MIT
Files
1 file

What it does

This is a set of operating instructions that teaches an AI agent how to locate and work on a specific group of remote Macs (and a few other machines) belonging to one person, the skill's author Peter Steinberger. It explains which machine to use for which task, how to find live hosts through Tailscale and local network discovery, how to connect over SSH without interactive prompts, and what not to touch, such as retired nodes, machines handed to someone else, and data-affecting provider actions that need explicit approval. It is written for that owner's private infrastructure, so it is mainly a reference for his setup rather than a general-purpose skill.

Great for

  • Peter Steinberger or someone maintaining his personal Mac fleet, who wants an agent to follow his routing and safety rules
  • Developers who want a real-world example of a detailed, safety-focused runbook for remote machine operations
  • Teams writing their own agent runbooks for multi-host infrastructure who want a template for identity checks and rollback rules

Skip it if

  • Anyone else: hostnames, IP addresses, and rules are specific to one private fleet and will not match another user's machines, so it would misroute commands or refuse valid targets
  • Unsupervised automation on production or provider-managed hosts: the file tells the agent to stop and ask before reboots, reimages, or credential changes, but an agent that ignores this could still cause outages or data loss
  • Anyone needing a generic SSH helper: the skill is mostly policy and topology, with no bundled scripts of its own

Try asking

  • “Check whether the SF Mac Studio is reachable over Tailscale and report its status”
  • “Run a read-only command on the London Mac Studio over SSH”
  • “Find which Mac on my network is advertising SSH using the LAN discovery steps”
  • “Diagnose why the personal cloud Mac is unreachable and draft an update for the provider ticket”
Step-by-step guide: how to use Remote Mac OperatorInstall, first run, examples, tips and FAQs

Install in 3 steps

  1. 1

    Download the skill

    The ZIP contains the 1 original files, the MIT licence and an attribution note.

    remote-mac.zip
  2. 2

    Add it to your agent

    Claude Code (all projects)

    mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && unzip remote-mac.zip -d ~/.claude/skills/

    Claude Code / Agent SDK (this project only)

    mkdir -p .claude/skills && unzip remote-mac.zip -d .claude/skills/

    Claude apps (web/desktop): Settings → Capabilities → Skills → Upload skill, and choose the ZIP.

  3. 3

    Ask for the task

    No special command needed — the agent reads the skill's description and loads it when your request matches. Try one of the prompts above.

Get better results

  • Adapt the topology and host sections to your own machines before using it; do not run it against the original owner's fleet unless you are that owner
  • Keep the approval rules intact: require a human to confirm any reboot, reset, reimage, or credential change, and keep SSH commands non-interactive as written
  • Pair it with a live inventory check (tailscale status) so the agent verifies identity before acting, since the file warns that cached IPs and hostnames can be stale

What's inside

  • SKILL.md

Redistributed unmodified from steipete/agent-scripts under the MIT licence. The assessment was drafted with AI from the skill's files on 2026-10-29. Skills can instruct your agent to run code — read SKILL.md and any scripts before installing.