Remote access

By default, Maisnie only answers on your own home network. This step (and the same section in Settings) lets you reach it from anywhere, on an address you already own — without opening a port on your router, and without anyone but you and Cloudflare ever seeing an unencrypted copy of the traffic in between.

What you need first

Two things, both from Cloudflare, both free for this:

• A domain in your Cloudflare account. If example.com is already there, an address like box.example.com works with no extra setup — you don’t add a new domain, just use a subdomain of one you already have.
• An API token, created at Cloudflare’s dashboard under My Profile → API Tokens → Create Token → Create Custom Token. It needs exactly two permissions, and Cloudflare’s own token page spells them precisely this way — Maisnie’s own field hints repeat the exact same words so you can match them:
• Zone → DNS → Edit
• Account → Cloudflare Tunnel → Edit

Maisnie never asks for more than these two. The token itself is a secret exactly like an API key on the model step — typed once, never shown back, only a note that one is already stored.

Turning it on

The Remote access step (after AI model, before Done) asks for two things: the address you want to use (for example box.example.com) and your Cloudflare API token. Press Turn on and Maisnie does the rest itself, in one step: it finds the Cloudflare zone that owns your address, creates a private tunnel to Cloudflare’s network under your account (naming it after your address, so you can recognise it if you ever look in your own Cloudflare dashboard), and points your address at it with a DNS record Cloudflare handles the encryption for. From that point on, https:// and your address is all anyone — including you, from your phone — needs to reach it.

If anything goes wrong, Maisnie says so in a plain sentence — a token missing one of its two permissions names which one; an address that isn’t a domain in your Cloudflare account says so too — and nothing already saved is disturbed. Fix it and press Turn on again; it’s safe to press more than once, it never creates a second tunnel for the same address.

“Skip for now” is a real, complete answer, exactly like “Decide later” on the model step — Maisnie works fine with remote access off, and you can turn it on at any time from Settings, not just during setup.

Testing it

Once it’s on, a Test button reaches your address the same way anyone outside your home network would — over the real internet, through Cloudflare, back to this computer — and reports the plain result right there. This page updates on its own while the test runs; a brand new address can take a minute to start working the very first time, so a failed test right after turning this on is usually just that. If it still doesn’t work after a minute, check that Maisnie is still running on this computer.

Turning it off

Turn off removes both the DNS record and the tunnel itself from your Cloudflare account, and turns remote access off on this computer either way — even if Cloudflare itself can’t be reached right now (Maisnie says so, and tells you to remove the tunnel from your Cloudflare dashboard by hand in that case). Your API token stays saved for next time; turning it back on doesn’t ask you to retype it.

What this changes about a session from outside your home network

A device signed in through your remote address is still required to sign in exactly the same way — this step changes nothing about the passphrase or the sign-in itself. What it does change: Maisnie knows the request came from outside your home network, and by default gives that session less power than one at home has — read-only, no changes. The Give remote sessions full access checkbox on the Settings page, off by default, is what removes that limit if you want it to.

What Maisnie needs installed to run this

Turning remote access on runs a small program, cloudflared, alongside Maisnie — the same program Cloudflare’s own instructions for a tunnel would have you install. The Docker image already includes it; a plain install needs it on PATH. maisnie doctor checks for it and says exactly what to install, for whichever computer it’s checking:

• Windows: download cloudflared.exe from Cloudflare and put it somewhere on PATH.
• macOS: brew install cloudflared.
• Linux: install it from Cloudflare’s own package repository (pkg.cloudflare.com), or download the release binary for your computer.

maisnie status (and maisnie remote status) shows the tunnel’s own state in plain words — off, starting, connected, or failing, with what kind of problem it is (a credential problem or a network problem) when it’s failing — never the token itself.

Next

Continue to daily use.