Ghost in the Droid

Ghost in the Droid

Ghost in the Droid is an MCP server that gives any LLM agent a real Android or iOS device as its body. 62 tools covering tap, swipe, type, screenshot, screen-tree reading, app launch, camera, TTS, crash reports, batched execution, and on-device inference.

Install: pip install ghost-in-the-droid Repo: https://github.com/ghost-in-the-droid/android-agent

When to use this skill

Use Ghost in the Droid when the user wants to:

• Control an Android phone or tablet via ADB
• Control an iPhone or iPad via WebDriverAgent
• Take screenshots of a real device screen
• Tap, swipe, type, or scroll on a device
• Launch or interact with mobile apps
• Run on-device inference (llama.cpp, MediaPipe, MLX)
• Automate mobile workflows end-to-end
• Spin up Android emulators via Docker+KVM pools

Setup

1. Install the MCP server

pip install ghost-in-the-droid

2. Add to your MCP config

For Claude Code (~/.claude/claude_code_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ghost-in-the-droid": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "ghost_in_the_droid"]
    }
  }
}

For OpenClaw:

openclaw mcp add ghost-in-the-droid --command "python -m ghost_in_the_droid"

3. Android prerequisites

# Install ADB
sudo apt install android-tools-adb   # Linux
brew install android-platform-tools  # macOS

# Connect device (USB or TCP)
adb devices

4. iOS prerequisites

WebDriverAgent must be installed and running on the target device. See the iOS setup guide.

Core tool reference

Screen interaction

Screen reading

App management

Device info

On-device inference

Emulators (Docker+KVM)

Batching

Usage patterns

Take a screenshot and describe what you see

1. Call screenshot → get base64 PNG
2. Pass to vision model for description

Find and tap a button by label

1. Call screen_tree → get accessibility tree
2. Find element with target label
3. Call tap with element bounds

Automate a login flow

1. launch_app("com.example.app")
2. screenshot → verify login screen
3. tap(username_field)
4. type_text("user@example.com")
5. tap(password_field)
6. type_text("password")
7. tap(login_button)
8. screenshot → verify logged in

Multi-device targeting

Always use device_id parameter to target a specific device when multiple are connected:

tap(x=100, y=200, device_id="emulator-5554")
screenshot(device_id="R3CN20ABCDE")

Tips

• Always call list_devices first to confirm devices are connected
• Use screen_tree over coordinate-based tapping when possible — it survives resolution changes
• run_flow is much faster than individual tool calls for scripted sequences
• For iOS, WebDriverAgent must be already running on the target device before using any iOS tools
• On-device inference tools require the model to be pre-loaded on device; call run_llm with a load action first