DroidDeck/docs/agent-control.md

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 require android.permission.DUMP, held by the ADB shell and privileged or explicitly granted callers. The provider checks the calling permission before decoding requests. A build shipped under another package (tools/release/variants.txt) answers at content://<package>.agent: set DROIDDECK_PACKAGE to that package for droiddeckctl.
• The guest agent droiddeck-agent runs inside every session (started by droiddeck-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, pacing, thermal, displays, wake, glasses (except glasses raw), 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, prefs, and glasses raw. 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.

Program overrides prepend their directory to the normal session PATH, including /usr/games where Ubuntu installs gamescopereaper. An explicit PATH=... environment entry replaces that default. If an old persistent PATH hides runtime tools, inspect tools/droiddeckctl env list and correct only PATH with env set --persistent, which preserves other persistent entries. For example, to restore the normal runtime search path:

tools/droiddeckctl env set --persistent 'PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games'

Retain any custom directories you still need alongside these runtime directories, then restart the session. env clear persistent removes all persistent environment settings, not just PATH; there is no single-entry clear operation. Before clearing that scope, record any other entries you want to keep and reapply them afterward.

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. logs downloads the archive Share logs builds (scrubbed, Steam logs over 8 MiB left out) from the app's external files folder, since adb cannot read the session folder itself. When the installed app predates archive export, the CLI falls back to pulling the private session folder; that legacy path is available only with root and is not scrubbed before download.

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.

When upgrading the CLI, use a new destination for the first pull if the old destination contains archives created by an older CLI without a .droiddeckctl-managed-logs.json manifest and their filenames overlap. The upgraded CLI refuses to overwrite those files to preserve unrelated data.

Commands

tools/droiddeckctl state
tools/droiddeckctl start steam --wait
tools/droiddeckctl start steam --wait --reuse
tools/droiddeckctl start steam --steamvr --wait
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 override libblfastpath.so ./libblfastpath.so
tools/droiddeckctl proot-profile enable --slow-us 1000
tools/droiddeckctl proot-profile disable
tools/droiddeckctl proot-profile report ./session.log --sort wall
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 xr-frame ./xr-capture
tools/droiddeckctl record ./clip.mp4 --seconds 8 --display 0
tools/droiddeckctl pacing --seconds 30
tools/droiddeckctl thermal
tools/droiddeckctl wait cool --below 38 --timeout 900
tools/droiddeckctl displays
tools/droiddeckctl wake

tools/droiddeckctl glasses status
tools/droiddeckctl glasses set refreshHz 120
tools/droiddeckctl glasses set 3d on
tools/droiddeckctl glasses simulate --seconds 6 --yaw 15
tools/droiddeckctl glasses stop-simulate
tools/droiddeckctl glasses mode 0x34
tools/droiddeckctl glasses raw 0x0007

Glasses status reports deviceMode from the MCU separately from sbs, which requires a physical stereo display mode. switching3d marks the bounded confirmation window. A successful mode-command reply alone does not confirm 3D. badFrames counts reports and IMU packets dropped for a bad checksum.

xr-frame captures both app eye textures while SteamVR is open, saving left.png, right.png and capture.json with the matching source frame, projection poses, FOV and dimensions. It works over wired or wireless authorized ADB. Newer builds also include source.png, the incoming stereo texture before the Android eye draw, and sRGB attachment/write state in the metadata for color debugging. Source PNGs use the incoming frame's color space and eye PNGs use sRGB. Transfers use Android's gzip utility to avoid sending full uncompressed images over wireless ADB. A unique request ID prevents stale images from passing as a fresh capture; no valid XR layer produces an explicit error. Captures exclude Meta system overlays and the headset compositor's final reprojection. GPU readback runs only on request and can briefly affect frame timing. Remote files are overwritten each time.

A sleeping device suspends the session and hides the app's windows from ui dump; wake first.

pacing reads SurfaceFlinger's timestats for the game's layer (the session's SurfaceView when the compositor has no layer of its own) and reports the frames that reached the panel, fpsOnScreen, the present-to-present histogram and the share of intervals off the usual cadence. A game's own fps counter counts frames handed over, not frames shown, so it can read 60 while one frame in four stays on screen for two refreshes.

thermal reports the battery temperature (dumpsys battery), the thermal status (dumpsys thermalservice, 0 NONE to 6 SHUTDOWN) and each CPU policy's scaling_max_freq against its cpuinfo_max_freq, with capped when the first is lower. wait cool --below <°C> polls it every 10 s until the battery is under that temperature, so runs being compared start equally cool.

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, steamVr, suspended, pip, firstFrame, output [w, h], refreshHz, lastTransitionAt, guestPid, installing
• logDir, 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.

Hand tracking diagnostics

With debugging tools enabled, the glasses provider accepts spatial-hand-options with optional boolean lite, halfRate, parallel, adaptive, and scheduled fields. These are temporary tracking-session controls and do not change the CPU/GPU delegate. parallel selects concurrent camera inference on CPU; GPU remains serial on its owning thread. scheduled enables persistent one-hand and two-hand detector banks on CPU, using the one-hand bank after stable agreement and periodically searching for another hand. GPU retains ordinary two-hand inference. adaptive lets CPU input rise from 500 permille to 600 or 800 only after sustained processing and observation-age headroom. Slow processing lowers the rate, and tracking loss resets it. Explicit halfRate selects manual input and disables adaptation; if both fields are supplied, adaptive is applied afterward. This allows restoring the manual preference and automatic mode in one request. CPU, full model, parallel inference, scheduled discovery, and automatic input starting at 500 permille are the defaults.

handModel, handCpuParallel, handAdaptiveInput, and handScheduledTracking identify the live selection. handInputRatePermille reports the current requested frame fraction, while cameraCopyPermille records the fraction used for the latest reported camera processing sample. At a 25 Hz source, 500/600/800 correspond to input limits of about 12.5/15/20 Hz, not completed tracking throughput. Calibration and explicit capture use 1000. cameraFrameDivisor remains 2 for 500, 1 for 1000, and 0 for intermediate fractions; use cameraCopyPermille for rate calculations. cameraHz still describes the source cameras; rateLimitedFrames counts deliberate skips and dropped counts eligible pairs replaced while processing is busy. These controls do not change the glasses' sensor rate or native head tracking.

spatial-hand-capture, with debugging tools enabled, requests one local stereo pair in files/spatial/captures. Use only for an explicitly requested diagnostic capture; it includes the wearer's surroundings. It does not upload images.

spatial-rgb-capture requests one local JPEG from the Luma Ultra's separate UVC RGB camera. It requires Android camera permission, USB permission for that camera, and debugging tools. If USB permission is requested, approve it and explicitly repeat the capture request; permission approval alone does not save an image. Poll spatial-rgb-status for completion and the local files/spatial/rgb-captures path. The isolated worker stops the stream after the requested diagnostic window or a timeout, then exits. The default transport: "sdk" uses the vendor's fixed 1920×1080/30-fps stream. With the optional UVC build present, transport: "uvc" selects the independent eight-buffer transport; width, height, fps, and durationMs default to 640, 480, 30, and 5000. Duration is bounded to 1000–30000 ms and camera modes must be supported by the device. This remains a manual debugging command, not a source of live controller positions. Both paths save usb.log and usb-descriptors.bin, including when acquisition fails. Direct UVC reports snapshotAcquired separately from streamHealthy. Health requires the full requested observation window, at least 80% of requested FPS, and no frame gap exceeding the larger of 250 ms or three frame periods. observedFps, maxFrameGapMs, and tailFrameAgeMs include silence at the end of the window. Status remains busy with phase: "finishing" until the capture worker exits, so a new request cannot race its teardown. receiptNs is the host callback time, not camera exposure time; the SDK timestamp can be zero. This diagnostic does not supply controller positions or replace the stereo tracking stream.

spatial-hand-benchmark takes a numeric capture directory name from the app's existing files/spatial/captures folder. It replays that saved stereo pair on CPU with full-model two-hand inference, scheduled full, scheduled lite, then full-model two-hand inference again, all with concurrent cameras. It clears live hand input during the comparison and never captures new images. Poll glasses.spatial.handBenchmark for completion, timing, and geometric results. Every replay row reports parallel and scheduled. wristOnly identifies the selected controller mode: bare-hand replay estimates hands, while Joy-Con replay estimates joyCons from wrist 0. Both report wrists after stereo geometry checks. Image preprocessing is raw grayscale replicated into RGB; lens correction applies once to landmark coordinates before triangulation. wrists reports landmark 0 after the existing stereo depth and reprojection checks, with the same unambiguous handedness pairing. Live Joy-Con tracking also uses wrist 0 directly, with motion and freshness checks; its positionEstimator is joycon-wrist. Samples identify the selected bank as inferenceHandLimit (1 or 2). Timings exclude model construction. Saved-pair results are not live accuracy, second-hand discovery delay, game performance, or motion-to-display latency measurements.

The live baseline is Full palm + Full landmarks. handImagePreprocessing is raw-grayscale-rgb; handLensCorrection reports pinhole-points-only, fisheye-points-only, or none. steadyHandAim is true only when bare hands and the optional shoulder-based aim setting are active.

handTracking includes leftRawHands/rightRawHands before handedness-confidence filtering, previousLeftRawHands/previousRightRawHands from the previous inference on those detectors (-1 after detector creation), and leftInferenceMs/rightInferenceMs. Existing leftCameraHands/rightCameraHands count confident handedness results. Compare camera timing against its previous raw count: the stock two-hand graph may repeat palm search when fewer than two hand regions were tracked. inferenceHandLimit identifies the bank that produced these counts; previous counts belong to that same persistent bank, not necessarily the preceding camera frame. These counts approximate graph conditions; they do not directly expose internal graph execution. Replay samples also include raw counts and camera timings. Accepted palms still require stereo depth, while pinch and grip validity now use agreement between image-space finger estimates from both cameras. Palm acceptance alone does not establish valid gesture input.

handTracking.experimental is always true. observationTimeNs identifies the processed camera observation; observationAgeMs is its age when diagnostics were published. Per-side left and right records expose outcome, reconstructedPalmLandmarks, raw trigger/grip estimates, geometry validity, and final input validity. observations contains connection-lifetime processedPairs, inferencePairs, and independent left/right acceptance, rejection-cause, tracking-loss, and gesture-loss counters. Each processed camera sequence is counted once; repeated status polling does not inflate these counters. Setup/off/clock/head failures count as processed pairs but not completed inference pairs. Skipped callbacks are not fabricated as observations. Sample deltas over a controlled hand-visible interval and inspect rejection causes before changing thresholds; these counters do not prove external latency or accuracy.

spatial.calibrationSource is device, luma-ultra-base, or none. calibrationVerified indicates an individual distance-validated profile; calibrated indicates geometry is available for experimental tracking, including the bundled model base. A shared base does not claim validation on every Luma Ultra. Matching local profiles take precedence.

glasses set joyConTracking true enables experimental Luma stereo-assisted Joy-Cons after positional tracking is enabled. It defaults off, excludes bare-hand controllers, and appears in both saved settings and spatial diagnostics. Driver logs identify each hand's transition between stereo hand and 6DoF arm estimate; camera positions are hand proxies, while Joy-Con sensors and buttons supply orientation and input.

The shared-memory channel is protocol 4, still 176 bytes. Snapshot flag bit 2 selects Luma Joy-Con tracking; bit 1 selects bare-hand controllers. Its word at byte offset 36 is input_epochs: four unsigned bytes in left-trigger, left-grip, right-trigger, right-grip order. Each byte increments modulo 256 when that gesture becomes ineligible. Inspect these counters when a loss may have happened between two reader samples: a later valid pose does not erase the intervening loss. Versions 1 through 3 are rejected, so a decoder, app, and driver must agree on version 4. Hand observation age remains limited to 200 ms, head age to 100 ms. For bare-hand controllers, a gap beyond 200 ms from the driver's last accepted observation releases input state even when the next read contains a fresh replacement. Duplicate observations cannot rearm an input; recovery requires a newer valid released gesture before a subsequent press.

Driver lines containing left optical input or right optical input report state changes, changed connection/origin/loss counters, and changed input API errors, rather than every frame. pose is the displayed pose's validity and can remain true during its short held-pose window; input is the current observation's eligibility for input processing. Read flags for independent gesture validity. raw contains trigger strength/grip state; out contains submitted trigger strength/click/grip; armed and epochs are trigger/grip pairs. error is ordered grip, trigger click, trigger scalar, using OpenVR's EVRInputError codes (0 means VRInputError_None). The line also includes ageMs, connection, and origin. controller inputs cleared: error=... records neutralization on mode changes, disconnect, or deactivation; a nonzero value is the last failed component update in that clearing pass.

The driver publishes these input updates before the controller pose, including invalid poses, and clears components before deactivation. A zero API error establishes successful submission, not delivery of a dashboard mouse-up event. The installed Vive compositor binding maps trigger to dashboard LeftClick (0.65 activation, 0.60 release) and grip to Back. Its grab-handle JavaScript attaches to the initiating hand on mouse-down and clears that attachment on mouse-up; that component has no tracking-invalid cleanup. A stuck dashboard drag therefore needs the driver submission and actual dashboard behavior checked separately. Do not synthesize a press or a valid pose as a recovery shortcut.

Controller display smoothing is independent of these gesture logs: there is no stationary dead zone. Poses converge with one 15 ms correction and bounded receipt-relative translation prediction (80 ms / 2 cm). A missed observation holds the last pose for up to 350 ms from capture; input freshness remains limited to 200 ms, and a detected miss releases inputs immediately. Neither stabilization nor prediction refreshes camera timestamps or creates gesture input.

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), keyboard.changed (Steam's on-screen keyboard opened or closed) 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 (the Library), rail-desktop, rail-store, rail-components, rail-android-apps, rail-setup, rail-updates	the front end's rail
play-steam	Play on the Steam page, and on the Library when it has no games
library-source-<source>	the Library's source filter chips (all, steam, gog, ...)
game-tab-<about|achievements|launch|saves|install>	the open tab of a game page
stores-profile, stores-epic-launcher	a store's profile strip, and the Epic Games Launcher row in Epic's
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, -vr, -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.

PRoot performance experiments

proot-profile enable queues handler profiling for the next session using the existing debugging consent gate. Counters and bounded slow samples appear in session.log; proot-profile report ranks a saved local log without ADB. This measures PRoot handler work, not full syscall latency. override libblfastpath.so FILE selects a glibc ARM64 shared library in the next session's preload list, reports its SHA-256, and refuses installation until the current session stops. It lasts for one session; the next session stages the bundled library again. See the profiling workflow for timing boundaries, build commands, path diagnostics, and A/B validation.