conorluddy / ios-simulator-skill

The scripts split into two halves: Xcode build automation (build_and_test.py runs a build or test pass and returns a one-line summary plus an xcresult ID you drill into on demand) and Simulator control via xcrun simctl and idb — semantic UI navigation by finding elements through the accessibility tree, gestures, keyboard input, app lifecycle, device permissions, hang detection, and simulator boot, create, erase, and delete. Screenshots are resized and compressed automatically on the scripts that do return one.

This is for someone using an AI coding agent to build and test an iOS app in the Simulator, where the payoff is specifically token cost: the README's own numbers put a screen analysis at 5 lines instead of 200+, and a login-flow check at 15 lines instead of 400+. The skill's own description advertises 29 scripts; the README's prose and its own script-by-script table both say 27, and counting that table gets 27 too — treat 29 as the outlier.

READ THE FULL ANALYSIS＋

What it costs to start. macOS 12+, Xcode Command Line Tools, and Python 3 cover the build scripts; IDB (brew install idb-companion) is optional and needed only for some interactive simulator features, and Pillow is optional and used only for visual diffs. Every timeout, output cap, and polling interval is tunable through IOS_SIM_* environment variables, but the defaults need nothing set to run.

If you only want the Xcode build half, the author publishes a separate plugin, xclaude-plugin, without the simulator scripts, and a separate MCP server, XC-MCP, for anyone who wants this as an MCP tool instead of a skill.