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androir-mcp

Drive real Android devices from any AI agent — see the screen, tap, swipe, type, over adb.

An independent, standalone Model Context Protocol server that gives an AI agent a clean, safe automation surface for physical Android devices and emulators: capture the screen, read the live UI tree, and drive input — backed entirely by adb + uiautomator, no native code and no device-side app.

      

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[!NOTE] Requires adb (Android platform-tools) and an Android device with USB debugging enabled (or an emulator). The server runs locally, holds no credentials, and talks only to the device(s) adb already sees.

✨ What is androir-mcp?

androir-mcp is a standalone MCP server for automating Android over adb. It is its own project — not a copy or port of anything — exposing a small, conventional screen-read + input tool set that drops into any MCP-based agent loop.

Everything is backed by adb and uiautomator: there is no native code and nothing to install on the device. The agent shells out to adb (always as an argv array — never a shell string) to capture screenshots, dump the UI hierarchy, and send input events.

The key advantage on Android is that describe_screen returns the real UI tree — exact element bounds and text straight from uiautomator — rather than guessing from OCR. Tap coordinates come back as element centers and feed straight into tap, so an agent can read a screen and act on it deterministically.

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🚀 Features

• 📸 screenshot — capture the device screen as a PNG (signature-validated).
• 🌳 describe_screen — parse the uiautomator UI tree into a flat list of

labels with center tap coordinates (text / content-desc / class, entity-decoded).

• 👆 tap / swipe / long_press — coordinate input in device pixels.
• ⌨️ type_text — type arbitrary text safely (spaces, metacharacters, and

unicode all type verbatim).

• 🔘 press_key / press_home / press_back — named key events.
• 📱 launch_app — launch by package name or a friendly name (resolved from

the installed package list, cached per device).

• 🔗 open_url — open an http(s) URL in the default browser.
• 🔎 list_targets / status — enumerate connected devices and read

device state, properties, and battery.

Safety by construction:

• 🛡️ argv-only adb — every command is an argument array, never a shell

string, and any value handed to the device shell is single-quoted for it, so there is no shell-injection surface.

• ✅ strict serial validation — serials are checked against

[A-Za-z0-9.:_-] (≤ 128 chars) before reaching any subprocess.

• ⏱️ per-call timeout (default 30 s) with process-group kill on timeout.
• 🤫 scrubbed errors — concise messages only; no raw adb stderr (which can

leak serials/paths) and no host stack traces reach the model.

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🛠️ Tools

| Tool | adb implementation | Returns | |---|---|---| | list_targets | adb devices -l | serials + model + state | | status | adb -s S get-state (+ props, battery) | device/offline/unauthorized + info | | screenshot | adb -s S exec-out screencap -p | PNG image content | | describe_screen | adb -s S exec-out uiautomator dump /dev/tty (fallback: dump to /sdcard then exec-out cat) → parse XML | element list: label / center tap (x,y) | | tap (x,y) | adb -s S shell input tap X Y | confirmation | | swipe (x1,y1,x2,y2,dur_ms?) | adb -s S shell input swipe X1 Y1 X2 Y2 DUR | confirmation | | long_press (x,y,dur_ms?) | input swipe X Y X Y DUR (same point) | confirmation | | type_text (text) | adb -s S shell input text '<quoted>' (space→%s, single-quoted for the device shell) | confirmation | | press_key (key) | adb -s S shell input keyevent <KEYCODE> — names: home→3, back→4, enter→66, recents→187 | confirmation | | press_home | input keyevent 3 | confirmation | | press_back | input keyevent 4 | confirmation | | launch_app (name or pkg) | resolve name→package (from pm list packages), then monkey -p PKG -c android.intent.category.LAUNCHER 1 | confirmation | | open_url (url) | am start -a android.intent.action.VIEW -d '<url>' (http/https only) | confirmation |

All tools take an optional serial; it defaults to the single connected device and errors if the choice is ambiguous. Coordinates are in device pixels, so describe_screen tap points feed straight into tap with no translation.

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🏁 Getting started

Prerequisites

• adb (Android platform-tools) on your PATH.
• An Android device with USB debugging enabled, or a running emulator.

Confirm it's visible:

  adb devices

Build

npm install
npm run build

Attach to an MCP client

Add the built server to your MCP client config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "androir": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/path/to/androir-mcp/dist/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

Verify

With a device connected, run the self-check (it lists targets, takes a screenshot, and dumps the UI tree):

npm run selfcheck

It prints PASS when the three core tools work end-to-end against a real device.

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🤖 Use with an AI agent

Once androir is attached to your MCP client, give the agent a goal and let it read the screen and act:

You: Open the Settings app, go to Wi-Fi, and tell me which network is connected. Agent: calls launch_app("settings") → describe_screen() (reads the labels + tap coordinates) → tap(x, y) on "Wi-Fi" → describe_screen() again → reports the connected network.

Because describe_screen returns exact element bounds and text, the agent taps real coordinates rather than guessing from a screenshot.

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🗺️ Status & roadmap

• [x] Core tools — screenshot, describe_screen, tap, swipe,

long_press, type_text, press_key/home/back, launch_app, open_url, list_targets, status

• [x] uiautomator XML parsing → labels + center tap coordinates (entity-decoded, malformed-XML tolerant)
• [x] Device-shell-safe input escaping (no shell injection) + strict serial validation
• [x] Unit tests for the XML parser and the input-escaping logic
• [x] Pre-push secret-scan hook
• [ ] Recording / replay skills
• [ ] Multi-device parallel control
• [ ] Emulator-specific paths
• [ ] Published npm package / npx bin

This README and roadmap fill in as the project progresses.

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📄 License

Apache-2.0.

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