Argent Android Emulator Setup

Boots Android emulators and gets them ready for UI automation through the argent MCP tools. When you call boot-device, it automatically tries a hot snapshot restore first (around 30 seconds) and falls back to a cold boot (2 to 10 minutes) if that fails. The nice part is it cleans up after itself on failure so you don't end up with zombie processes. Once the device is up, you pass its serial as the udid to gesture, screenshot, and app launch tools. One quirk worth knowing: it handles Android TV AVDs too, but those are focus driven, not touch driven, so you need different interaction tools. Stops you from tapping on a leanback interface that won't respond.

skills.sh installs: 30.3K
GitHub stars: 3.2K
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add software-mansion/argent --skill argent-android-emulator-setup --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

1. Prerequisites

The Android SDK (platform tools and emulator) and an AVD, created in Android Studio or with avdmanager create avd. If list-devices returns no Android devices and no avds, either no AVD exists or Argent can't find the SDK. Then run argent config set android.sdkRoot <sdk-path> and call list-devices again after a minute: a failed SDK lookup is cached that long. Exporting ANDROID_HOME in your shell doesn't reach the tool-server that is already running.

2. Setup

Find a ready device: call list-devices. Filter for entries with platform: "android". Ready devices (state: "device") come first. If the user named a device, use it. Otherwise pick the first kind: "emulator" that fits the task. Take a physical phone (kind: "device") only when the user asks for one. If the result has a hint about the adb server, prefix every adb command that you run yourself, as the hint shows.
Boot if needed: if no such emulator is ready, call boot-device with avdName: <name> from the same call's avds list. avds doesn't mark TV images: for a TV task, pick the AVD by its name.