Phone Harness
MIT CLI that lets coding agents drive a real phone
AI Agents / Agents · OSS/MIT · 3.8k
Reviewed 2026-10-16 · last push 2026-10-17 · repo checked 2026-10-19
What's Good
MIT (ShawnPana/phone-harness), release 0.3.2 on PyPI, installed with uv. The agent writes short Python against pre-imported helpers (open_app, tap_text, type_text, screen), and a bundled SKILL.md teaches it the loop. On iPhone it reads the screen with Apple's Vision OCR, and on Android it uses the accessibility tree. Android works from macOS, Linux or Windows, phone-harness doctor checks the setup, and there is a Hermes Agent plugin. ★~3.7k.
The Catch
Young (first released Aug 2026). The iPhone path needs a Mac with iPhone Mirroring plus Accessibility and Screen Recording permissions, and unlocking the phone pauses mirroring. OCR sees text, not icons, and there is no multi-touch, camera or Face ID. The README pushes Phone Harness Cloud, a paid service with rented phones billed by the minute after 100 free minutes. Handing an agent your real phone also hands it your payments, messages and 2FA, so keep a human watching. Stars have climbed fast for a two-month-old repo (about 370 a week), so don't read the count as proof of maturity.
Verdict
The simplest way to let an agent test or operate a mobile app on a real device — on a spare phone, not your daily one.
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Markdown
[](https://stackgems.com/gems/phone-harness)
HTML
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