serve-sim
EvanBacon
Hosts an Apple Simulator over HTTP and ships an Agent Skill so coding agents can run and verify iOS apps.
What is serve-sim?
A CLI that hosts an Apple Simulator over HTTP, 'the npx serve of Apple Simulators': a Swift helper captures the simulator framebuffer and exposes it as an MJPEG stream plus a WebSocket control channel and a React preview UI. It ships an Agent Skill that teaches coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI) to drive the simulator and forwards simulator logs to MCP tools, from Evan Bacon (Expo).
Pros & Cons
Pros
- A real agent angle: a bundled Agent Skill plus MCP log forwarding let coding agents run, view and interact with apps on a simulator
- No Xcode plugin or app instrumentation needed; works locally, over LAN or tunnelled from a remote Mac
- Permissive Apache-2.0 and a reputable maintainer (Expo/React Native)
Cons
- Hard platform lock-in: Apple Silicon macOS only, needs Xcode and simctl, so it is irrelevant outside iOS work
- No tagged GitHub releases or changelog; versioning is tracked via npm
- Used purely as a viewer it is just a dev tool; the AI value depends on adopting its skill and MCP wiring
License
Apache-2.0 (OSI-open)
When it is interesting
An AI coding agent needs to build, run and visually verify iOS apps on a simulator, closing the loop between code and behaviour.
When it is too early
If you are not in the Apple Silicon iOS toolchain, or only need a passive screen viewer.
This repo featured in the 2026-07 edition of the Open-Source AI Radar.
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