11 KiB
Agent control
tools/droiddeckctl drives DroidDeck on a real device over ADB, for agents and scripts that test
the app end to end: start and stop sessions, launch and quit Steam games, wait for a game to have
focus, send input, inspect the app's UI and gamescope's windows, run commands inside the session,
and collect logs, screenshots and recordings. tools/droiddeck-scenario repeats a scripted test
and reports every run.
How it works
- The provider
content://com.droiddeck.launcher.agent(agent/AgentBridgeProvider.kt) answers each command with JSON. It and the session-start Activity (AgentStartActivity) are in every build and requireandroid.permission.DUMP, held by the ADB shell and privileged or explicitly granted callers. The provider checks the calling permission before decoding requests. - The guest agent
droiddeck-agentruns inside every session (started bydroiddeck-session). It runs commands with the session's own environment, publishes gamescope's focus, and talks to the Steam client's DevTools, which only accepts guest processes. The app and the agent exchange request and answer files under the session root (files/session/agent). - The UI dump reads the app's Compose semantics from inside the app (
agent/AgentUi.kt), so it works on every display and window. UI Automator, by contrast, dumps whichever window has focus, which on a dual-screen device is often another app's.
Access
Player controls and observations work over authorized ADB on any build: state, start, stop,
resume, wait, launch, quit, focus, input, ui, logs, screenshot, record, displays,
wake, and access.
Setup > Diagnostics > Debugging tools is off by default in every build, including debug builds.
It enables run, guest, cdp, all env operations, override, and prefs. The toggle switches
directly without a confirmation dialog. The bridge refuses to change it through ui or preference
writes. The existing preference key, setting-agent-commands test tag, JSON command names, and
AGENT_COMMANDS_DISABLED error code are unchanged. Refusals exit 7; droiddeckctl access reports
whether commands are enabled.
Disabling the toggle clears queued and persistent agent environment settings and installed binary overrides. Disabled settings cannot apply at the next session start. Already running commands and effects already applied to a session are not undone; stop and restart that session to discard them.
Authorized command execution runs inside the runtime containing Steam's saved login. CDP evaluates
JavaScript in the authenticated Steam client, and preferences can contain private values. These
capabilities remain unrestricted when enabled: the toggle is an explicit opt-in, not credential
isolation or a sandbox against the authorized caller. Main already supported arbitrary guest
programs through run; restricting credential access would require addressing that route too.
ADB access remains a trust boundary, and ADB input can operate the device's own toggle.
The helper exchanges private files with the app and adds no network listener. The guarded Steam DevTools port is bound to loopback and accepts only peers with a fresh private registration for a live socket descriptor, matching socket inode, destination port, and address family. The existing x86_64 Decky loader exception remains: that mode does not enable the guest-only acceptance guard.
Requests are limited to 256 KiB of encoded JSON. Guest responses and DevTools messages are limited
to 1 MiB; provider replies above 384 Ki characters return RESPONSE_TOO_LARGE to avoid overflowing
Binder. Command output retains at most 256 KiB per stream while continuing to drain both streams.
Timeouts must be finite, positive, and no greater than 600 seconds, and terminate the command's
process group. Override installation refuses path traversal and symbolic links.
Automatic process logs record environment keys and argument counts rather than values or full
argument lists. UI nodes marked as passwords redact text, editable text, descriptions, and state
text. This does not redact arbitrary authorized command results, CDP data, preferences, or screen
captures. Scenario directories are owner-only and JSON reports are written with mode 0600. Review
artifacts before sharing; a live logs pull copies the current folder without a fresh export scrub.
Device selection and output
The CLI resolves one authorized device using ADB_SERIAL or ANDROID_SERIAL when set. Otherwise it
de-duplicates transports that report the same device serial and asks for an explicit serial if
multiple devices remain. Pass --serial before the command to choose directly; set ADB (or pass
--adb) to choose an adb executable. tools/deploy_local.sh uses the same resolver.
Every command writes one JSON object to stdout and its resolved serial to stderr. Exit codes: 0 success, 2 invalid or rejected command, 3 ADB or device error, 4 session error, 5 timeout, 6 artifact or file error, 7 debugging tools disabled.
Commands
tools/droiddeckctl state
tools/droiddeckctl start steam --wait
tools/droiddeckctl start steam --wait --reuse
tools/droiddeckctl start desktop
tools/droiddeckctl run /usr/bin/foo -- arg1 arg2
tools/droiddeckctl wait ready|idle|failed
tools/droiddeckctl stop
tools/droiddeckctl resume
tools/droiddeckctl launch 489830 --wait
tools/droiddeckctl wait focused 489830
tools/droiddeckctl wait game
tools/droiddeckctl quit 489830
tools/droiddeckctl focus
tools/droiddeckctl input key ENTER
tools/droiddeckctl input text 'hello world'
tools/droiddeckctl input tap 640 360
tools/droiddeckctl input swipe 100 600 100 100 --duration 400
tools/droiddeckctl input pad a
tools/droiddeckctl input stick left 0 -1 --hold 500
tools/droiddeckctl input trigger right 1.0
tools/droiddeckctl ui dump
tools/droiddeckctl ui click rail-steam
tools/droiddeckctl ui click --match "Play"
tools/droiddeckctl ui set-text some-field --text abc
tools/droiddeckctl guest -- xprop -root GAMESCOPE_FOCUSED_APP
tools/droiddeckctl cdp targets
tools/droiddeckctl cdp eval 'SteamClient.Apps.GetMyRunningApps?.()'
tools/droiddeckctl env set DXVK_HUD=fps
tools/droiddeckctl env list
tools/droiddeckctl env clear [next|persistent|all]
tools/droiddeckctl override gamescope ./gamescope
tools/droiddeckctl prefs get session
tools/droiddeckctl prefs set session some_key true --type bool
tools/droiddeckctl logs latest ./session-artifacts
tools/droiddeckctl screenshot ./screen.png --display 4
tools/droiddeckctl record ./clip.mp4 --seconds 8 --display 0
tools/droiddeckctl displays
tools/droiddeckctl wake
A sleeping device suspends the session and hides the app's windows from ui dump; wake first.
input needs a session that has drawn its first frame. Pad input goes through the session screen's
virtual pad, the same one the on-screen controls drive, so games that ignore touch still respond.
launch, quit and cdp need a Steam session; focus and wait focused need gamescope (every
mode except the desktop).
State (schema 2)
state returns schema, build, appVersion, runtime {installed, version},
agent {guest, guestFocus, commands} and session:
id,phase,running,mode,program,steamUi,steamUrl,suspended,pip,firstFrame,output[w, h],refreshHz,lastTransitionAt,guestPid,installinglogDir,eventsFile,artifactsAvailable,artifactsComplete,failure {code, message, status}focus: gamescope's focus as the guest agent last published it, or null:focusedApp,focusedWindow,focusableApps,baselayerAppIds,seq,t.
Phases: IDLE, PREPARING, INSTALLING_RUNTIME, STARTING_COMPOSITOR, STARTING_GUEST,
STARTING_STEAM, READY, SUSPENDED, STOPPING, FAILED. Schema 2 only added agent and
session.focus; every schema 1 field is unchanged.
A game the player can see is focusedApp == appId and appId in focusableApps.
GAMESCOPE_FOCUSABLE_WINDOWS is what the Steam client orders the base layer from: a game missing
there stays behind the client's loading screen however healthy its window looks
(docs/development/steam-focus-debugging.md). focus returns the full snapshot, including each
server's windows with map state, override-redirect, app id, WM_STATE, pid, class, opacity and
_NET_WM_STATE.
Events
Each session writes events.jsonl beside its other artifacts: the lifecycle (session.created,
compositor.started, guest.exited, ...) plus agent.ready (the guest agent is up),
focus.changed (the focused app, focusable apps or base-layer order changed) and
agent.launch_requested.
UI test tags
Compose test tags are exposed as resource ids (ui/TestTags.kt), so both ui dump and UI
Automator show them:
| Tag | Where |
|---|---|
rail-steam, rail-games, rail-desktop, rail-store, rail-components, rail-android-apps, rail-setup, rail-updates |
the front end's rail |
play-steam |
Play on the Steam and Games pages |
setting-<key> |
every toggle and choice row, by its key (setting-logs, setting-agent-commands, ...) |
tab-<n> |
a page's tab strip (Setup's Overview, Controller, Session, Launcher...), by position |
drawer-tab-controller, -second_screen, -display, -effects, -games, -session |
the session drawer's pages |
drawer-stop, drawer-stop-confirm, drawer-stop-cancel |
stopping a session from the drawer |
Scenarios
tools/droiddeck-scenario runs a JSON scenario: setup once, steps repeat times, teardown
once. Each run starts with before (typically start steam --wait --reuse, so a session that died
in one run, to a crash or the low-memory killer, is started again for the next) and ends with
after, whether it passed or not, so a failed run cannot leave a game running into the next. A list step is a droiddeckctl command line; {"assert": "dotted.path", "equals"|"in"| "contains"|"not"|"exists": ...} checks the last answer; {"sleep"}, {"screenshot"} and
{"record"} do what they say. A failing run keeps a screenshot, the focus snapshot and the
session's logs in its folder, and report.json sums up the runs.
tools/droiddeck-scenario tools/scenarios/steam-game-focus.json --var appId=489830 --repeat 10 --keep-going
tools/scenarios/steam-game-focus.json launches a game, checks it has focus the way a player
sees it, and quits it: the test that catches a game left behind Steam's loading screen, which only
shows up in some fraction of launches. A game with a launcher of its own needs the launcher pressed
through first, since the launcher window carries the game's app id too:
tools/scenarios/skyrim-launcher-focus.json taps Skyrim's Play before checking.