Shipping Features From My Phone

Last week, I merged a pull request into the DataTalks.Club course management platform, the system we use to manage course homework and projects. The PR added a Spotify Wrapped-style experience to the platform: 2025 community highlights, the most popular courses, top learners, and individual, shareable Wrapped pages for each participant.

Most of the work happened on my smartphone while I was commuting to pick up my kid.

In this post, I'll walk through how I did it: opening the PR from a tram stop, iterating with Copilot from my phone, and deploying via CI/CD.

How I Did It

Here's the workflow from idea to production, all from my phone except the final deploy.

1. Starting the PR from a Tram Stop

The idea came to me while I was standing at a tram stop: it would be useful to have a single page summarizing what learners achieved across our Zoomcamps throughout the year.

I opened GitHub on my phone, dictated a rough issue description using voice input, and assigned it to Copilot. About 20-30 minutes later, Copilot opened a PR with working pages, code, and screenshots.

2. Iterating Without a Laptop

Once the PR was open, I reviewed the changes and Copilot updated the code based on my comments. I handled the whole back-and-forth from my phone.

I scroll through the code changes on my phone, leave comments, tag Copilot, and ask for specific updates. After Copilot pushes a new version, I review again and repeat if needed. That works well for small changes: copy tweaks, layout adjustments, and minor logic updates.

Voice recognition sometimes gets it wrong. In the original issue I said "top 100," which became "top 1200" in an early version of the PR. Those mistakes are easy to fix: I spot them in review, leave a comment, and reassign Copilot.

One particularly useful detail: Copilot can run the project, generate UI screenshots, and attach them to the PR. I can check that the page renders and that buttons and links behave as expected. The screenshots aren't perfect (Copilot has no internet access, so some styles don't load), but they're enough to confirm nothing is obviously broken.

3. Phone vs. Laptop Work

After each new comment, Copilot takes about 10-30 minutes to update the PR. I go through this review-and-comment cycle several times a day from my smartphone, often in short windows between other tasks. For small and medium-sized changes, it's remarkably effective.

What I don't do from my phone is final approval for complex changes. For larger features, deeper testing, or anything that could break production, I still sit down at my laptop. CI/CD helps: once I merge a PR, changes are automatically deployed to our dev environment, where I can test visually. If everything looks good, deploying to production is a single button in GitHub.

Tools I Used

Here are the specific tools that made this possible:

GitHub (mobile)

• Open and assign issues from the phone
• Dictate issue descriptions with voice input
• Review PR diffs, leave comments, tag Copilot
• Merge PRs when ready
• Trigger production deployment from the Actions tab

GitHub Copilot

• Generates working code and UI from a high-level issue description
• Updates the PR based on inline comments and @mentions
• Runs the project and attaches screenshots to the PR for visual check
• Handles copy, layout, and logic changes in one cycle

CI/CD (GitHub Actions)

• Auto-deploys merged PRs to the dev environment
• Manual production deployment with a single "Run workflow" from the main branch
• Optional tag and confirmation step for production

Key Takeaways

You don't need a laptop for routine engineering: Most of the work is writing clear instructions, reviewing output, and correcting mistakes. If you're comfortable with that loop, you can close multiple PRs a day from a tram stop.

Voice input is good enough: Dictating an issue at a tram stop led to a full PR in 20-30 minutes. Occasional mistakes (e.g. "top 1200" instead of "top 100") are easy to fix in review.

Copilot's screenshots save time: Even without network access, the generated UI screenshots are enough to confirm layout and behavior before you sit down at a laptop.

Reserve the laptop for the critical path: I still use a laptop for final approval, deeper testing, and production deploy. CI/CD does the rest.

Small iterations fit mobile: 10-30 minutes per Copilot cycle fits well into short gaps: commute, waiting room, or between meetings.

See It Live

You can explore the result here:

• Wrapped 2025: courses.datatalks.club/wrapped/2025/
• Course platform: courses.datatalks.club
• PR: GitHub - Add DataTalks.Club Wrapped feature #115

For many routine tasks, the bottleneck is no longer the machine: it's clear instructions and a good review loop.