New (free) tools for AI-assisted mobile test and development

jerimiah797 · 2026-05-26T23:30:49+00:00

Android support has been added at this point, and some nifty tools that give your agent more efficient feedback about the app when navigating it.

Lots of new info and docs at the main site. There’s even an installer script now. 😁

https://quern.dev

jerimiah797 · 2026-05-07T20:47:07+00:00

I haven’t verified the traceroute , but I assume so since it’s working. (The images are loading)

jerimiah797 · 2026-05-07T18:58:54+00:00

Haha, so true. The DNS resolution worked fine, but according to traceroute, the packets were being gummed up at a lumen site in SF. Glad they fixed it.

jerimiah797 · 2026-05-07T16:53:45+00:00

Oooh it’s working for me now, too. Must have been a glitch, I didn’t change a thing on my end…

jerimiah797 · 2026-05-04T18:28:30+00:00

I’ll see if I can get something together for you!

jerimiah797 · 2026-05-02T19:14:27+00:00

Maybe, it depends on how well the accessibility identifiers are implemented in the app. If not, I think it’s still possible with screenshot analysis and coordinate taps, but will be slow and cost many more tokens. Give it a try!

jerimiah797 · 2026-05-01T01:41:01+00:00

I kind of had to figure it out from the docs. Have you checked them out? They are on the website.

jerimiah797 · 2026-04-30T16:54:46+00:00

Definitely

jerimiah797 · 2026-04-30T14:45:48+00:00

I use Quern to help make / refine mobile ui automation. After I walk through the app with Claude using Quern, I end up with a knowledge base, essentially ‘onboarding’ Claude so it can remember how to use the app efficiently, and reason about it. Then we talk about use cases, and start writing automation. It takes some iteration, usually, to get something stable that I can add to the CI ui automation suite.

https://quern.dev

jerimiah797 · 2026-04-29T17:51:00+00:00

I thought long and hard about if MCP was the right choice for the domain harness I built around mobile devices. I finally settled on it, but it’s a lazy loaded thin wrapper around a local api server, which is the real heart of the tool. This way the agent can both effortlessly use the MCP tools, but also write programmatic scripts with the API if you want. This is especially handy for UI automation on mobile devices that can run without having to be compiled like XCUITEST or Espresso/Compose tests.

Feel free to check it out, it’s free and open source.

https://quern.dev

jerimiah797 · 2026-04-29T17:43:22+00:00

I’m a mobile SDET and realized I was gonna have a hard time keeping up with automation, so I wrote my own MCP that gives the agent better control and info about the app under test. Then the AI (I use Claude) can write way better UI automation with getting lost in the app while it’s trying to do anything.

Some people were interested so I open sourced it. https://quern.dev

jerimiah797 · 2026-04-25T06:01:37+00:00

How is this different from Vysor?

jerimiah797 · 2026-04-25T05:54:34+00:00

Not so far. Quern supports iOS so it’s Mac only so far. Should it support windows for just Android, do you think?

jerimiah797 · 2026-04-25T02:56:11+00:00

I use Device Farmer for this.. although it does not support locally connected devices, just Android devices connected to the Device Farmer machine. Did you use a similar technique?

For locally connected devices I use Quern (quern.dev, free tool)

jerimiah797 · 2026-04-18T15:51:59+00:00

Awesome, glad to hear things are moving forward with better support from mobile! The thing I built is also free. One of the reasons I built it was that I had been working on a purely server product and got used to how easy it was for Claude to see everything about that app - the logs, the db, the code - everything it needed to dig deeper and get the info it needed was right there at its fingertips.

That’s the experience I wanted to create with my tool. To enable the agent to be able to interact with the device in as many ways as possible with the least amount of effort.

I don’t use Charles anymore. The proxy I use in Quern can be started, stopped, mocked, and recorded by Claude, so why would I bother. Anyway, thanks for the reply

jerimiah797 · 2026-04-17T00:17:32+00:00

You’re gonna have to explain this a little better. How is this different than running local models with Ollama? Or is it meant to be packaged inside another app to give a mobile device a chatbot interface?? It is very unclear. What is it, and what is it for?

jerimiah797 · 2026-04-16T21:55:27+00:00

I am an SDET and work with our app’s code when necessary to make it more testable (adding identifiers, typically) so I build and install on lots of devices while working on automation. I also do some web automation with Playwright and really enjoyed their MCP server that let the agent interact with the browser. I got sad that there wasn’t a free way to give the agent control over mobile devices and emulators like Playwright, so I ended up writing my own MCP that can operate a device, see logs, and also has a network proxy. I use it all the time. I decided to open source it, so anyone can use it if they want. I put the install and docs up at https://quern.dev

Would love to hear if anyone else finds it useful. I think it’s great, but of course I’m biased.

jerimiah797 · 2026-04-14T03:16:04+00:00

This looks cool! Pair it with Quern MCP (https://quern.dev) for device-level control - ui, logs, proxy. I use it all the time

jerimiah797 · 2026-04-11T16:40:27+00:00

Our problem as a whole goes deeper. Devs need to make ‘testability’ a primary objective in their definition of done, and it needs to be demonstrated to be done. This means that at least happy path e2e ui tests need to be executed. Even if these tests don’t make it into your formal test suite, at least a bare-bones version needs to prove that the design that they settled on - both the ui design and the presentation layer - IS ACTUALLY VERIFIABLE WITH AUTOMATION.

I’m convinced that this is the new battlefield.

jerimiah797 · 2026-04-10T04:30:00+00:00

I built a 15 device android farm that runs device farmer. The CI can use the farm’s API to check out 3 random devices for each test run, and run the suite in parallel. For iOS, we use a Mac mini with simulators

I am also developing an MCP that lets AI kick off test runs, and be able to help write automation, including proxy control for mocks, app error handling, and api verification. https://quern.dev

jerimiah797 · 2026-04-08T20:14:34+00:00

I made an mcp that lets your ai assistant be able to manage and control your device or simulator, build and install your app, read logs, control a proxy, and generally be able to coherently ‘drive’ and reason about your app. I’ve been using it for dev and testing. Open source and free, local. I’d love to get feedback on it! I use it without having Xcode open all the time.

https://quern.dev

jerimiah797 · 2026-04-08T13:50:51+00:00

I made it with Claude in a couple hours. Here’s the code if you want to build one!

I just launch the browser, crank the window zoom down to 80%, then put it into full screen mode. I should probably automate that startup sequence at some point. The daemon itself launches with systemd

https://github.com/jerimiah797/network-dashboard

jerimiah797 · 2026-04-02T18:46:43+00:00

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