Holy crap, Codex can use your iPhone!

Introducing: phone-harness

Automate any iOS app like a human would Native iPhone control → no API, no jailbreak Connect once, control anytime

Set it up with just one prompt. Get started now https://github.com/ShawnPana/phone-harness…

Compared to @airtap_ai, this one can only run locally.

Airtap, on the other hand, gives the AI agent a dedicated Android phone that’s always online and already logged into various apps, so it can carry out “phone automation” anytime, anywhere. Airtap is more fun.

https://airtap.ai

ShawnPana/phone-harness

Source: https://github.com/ShawnPana/phone-harness

Phone Harness 📱

Connect an LLM directly to your real iPhone with a thin, editable harness. No jailbreak, no Xcode, no WebDriverAgent.

The Mac’s iPhone Mirroring window is the whole transport: screencapture + Vision-framework OCR for eyes, HID-level CGEvents for hands. Nothing between the agent and the phone. The agent writes what’s missing during execution in agent-workspace/agent_helpers.py.

● agent: wants to open Weather │ ● ocr() → "Weather" at (400, 468) │ ● tap(400, 468) → wait_stable() → ocr() confirms the forecast ✓ done

Your phone, driven by an agent.

Setup prompt

Paste into Claude Code or Codex:

``text Set up phone-harness for me. Clone https://github.com/ShawnPana/phone-harness into ~/.phone-harness (its canonical home) and read install.md first to install it and connect it to my real iPhone through the macOS iPhone Mirroring app — install it so phone-harness is a command on my PATH, and register it as an agent skill named phone-harness using phone-harness skill as the body, so you reach for it automatically. Then read SKILL.md for normal usage, and always read src/phone_harness/helpers.py because that is where the functions are. Whenever you capture or verify the screen, activate the iPhone Mirroring window so I can see what you’re doing on the phone.

Setup needs two things only I can do: pairing iPhone Mirroring with my phone once, and granting the terminal Accessibility + Screen Recording in System Settings — walk me through those and wait for me. Verify with ./phone-harness --doctor.

After it’s installed, as a quick demo that interaction works, go to my Home Screen and — if the phone is connected and unlocked — ask me whether you should open the Weather app as a harmless test; only open it if I say yes. If the session is paused or the phone is locked, just tell me the doctor status instead. ``

The agent will walk you through the two things only you can do: pairing iPhone Mirroring with your phone once (the pairing prompts need the physical phone), and granting the terminal Accessibility (taps & keystrokes) and Screen Recording (seeing the phone) in System Settings → Privacy & Security. Screen Recording takes effect after the terminal restarts; Accessibility is immediate. Then ./phone-harness --doctor verifies the whole chain.

These are the permissions currently known to be required. A fresh machine may prompt for more the first time an action runs — if --doctor passes but taps or capture silently do nothing, watch for a macOS permission prompt. See install.md for details.

Why this works

iPhone Mirroring (macOS