Prerequisites
Android SDK Platform Tools
on PATH — provides
adb
.
Android Emulator
on PATH — needed to boot AVDs. If you will only use an already-running emulator or a physical device, adb alone is sufficient.
An AVD created via Android Studio or
avdmanager create avd
.
Verify with
adb version
and
emulator -list-avds
.
Setup
Find a ready device
— call
list-devices
. Filter for entries with
platform: "android"
. Ready devices (
state: "device"
) come first. Pick the first
serial
(e.g.
emulator-5554
) unless the user specified one.
Boot if needed
— if nothing Android is ready, call
boot-device
with
avdName:
from the same call's
avds
list. The tool transparently picks hot vs cold boot: it probes the AVD's
default_boot
snapshot, restores it under a tight deadline when usable, and falls back to a full cold boot otherwise. Hot path is typically ~30s; cold path takes 2–10 min. On any stage failure the tool kills the emulator process it started so your next call starts from a clean state.
Metro (for React Native)
— once a device is up, run
adb -s reverse tcp:8081 tcp:8081
so the device can reach Metro on your host. Repeat if the device restarts. See the
argent-metro-debugger
skill.
Using the device
Pass the Android serial as
udid
to the unified interaction tools —
gesture-tap
,
gesture-swipe
,
describe
,
screenshot
,
launch-app
,
keyboard
, etc. Dispatch is automatic based on the id shape. See
argent-device-interact
for platform-neutral interaction tooling and the Android-specific gotchas section at the bottom of that skill.