system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[The Matrix] Is it ever explained how Neo can be connected to the Matrix without the need for plugs?

So, the end of Reloaded shows Neo using his One power ^((One power to rule the code, One power to find the Smith; One power to bring them all and in the Matrix bind them.)^) to shut down a Sentinel. Given how his power is meant to work, subconsciously warping and rewriting the code around him, in the Matrix this could make sense since both the Matrix and the Sentinels are controlled by the Machines (the Source), so Neo could hypothetically connect to the Sentinel's firmware from the Matrix and shut it down. But he isn't in the Matrix - there is no physical connection. 

It's possible that this is a an effect of his presence in it earlier, that he could have subconsciously written programs to intervene if his body were in danger, but in Revolutions he's shown in the Matrix normally and it's never explained how. He even does something that flatly breaks the rules of the series, by somehow sensing Bane's position without him *or* the Matrix having any way of telling.

I have read an honestly plausible and interesting theory from this very sub that Neo wasn't completely human and was designed to be the One by the Machines, but I'm interested in if the series itself ever tried to explain this.
gpt
It was explained in the (canon) *The Matrix Online* game.

Thomas Anderson had been given an experimental wireless connection to the Matrix, like a machine; which was going to become standard-issue in the next Matrix once the kinks were worked out. That was his original purpose in the machine's plan; bug testing.

In a moment of crisis, he used his powers to rewrite the code and connect to the machine network, allowing him to both mess with Sentinels and (later) see the machine code when he was blinded. This was why he found himself trapped in a coma, having to make his way through the machine network back to the matrix via the Trainman's private domain, the connection between the machine world and the "human world" (the Matrix.)

The reason this wasn't made clear in the films was that the final two movies were originally intended to be *one* film; it would have been revealed in the final movie, which covered the machine side of things. Elements of this scrapped third movie went into the animated shorts (especially *The Second Renaissance*) and the videogames, both of which are considered canon.