Phone Harness is an open-source tool that lets your AI agent control your real phone. Published on GitHub, it has gathered about 3,868 stars and is under active development in 2026. Connect a coding agent such as Claude Code or Codex, and the agent can see the phone’s screen, tap, type, and read the results โ opening apps, completing multi-step tasks, and operating mobile software that has no API at all.
The harness reaches iPhones through the Mac’s iPhone Mirroring window and Android phones over ADB from macOS, Linux, or Windows. Nothing needs to be installed on the phone itself, and there is no jailbreak involved. The agent works from live screen content: it finds on-screen text, taps the right element, types, and verifies the outcome visually. For teams that do not want to manage physical devices, Phone Harness Cloud offers hosted iPhones and Androids that agents can drive remotely over HTTPS or ADB. Published demos show an agent completing real errands, such as ordering a ride from the phone’s current location.
Phone Harness follows a freemium model. The open-source harness is free to use with your own devices under the MIT license. The optional Phone Harness Cloud, which provides hosted phones with real numbers and remote access, is a paid service.
Phone Harness is for developers, QA engineers, and automation enthusiasts who need AI agents to operate mobile apps end-to-end โ testing flows, automating phone-only tasks, or giving an agent hands on the mobile software their users actually use.