Phone Harness: Open-Source Phone Control for AI Agents
Phone Harness lets an AI agent use your phone. It’s an open-source tool, MIT licensed with about 4,900 stars on GitHub, that gives Claude Code, Codex or any other agent the ability to read a phone’s screen and tap, type and scroll through its apps, with no jailbreak and nothing installed on the phone. An iPhone connects through the iPhone Mirroring window on a Mac, and an Android phone connects over adb. For people without a spare phone, Phone Harness Cloud rents hosted Android phones by the minute and real iPhones on a monthly subscription. It’s made by Phone Harness Inc., a Y Combinator Fall 2026 company founded by Shawn Pana.
The quick answer: Phone Harness is a fast-growing open-source option for giving an agent a phone, and its iPhone approach is unusually light: it rides on Apple’s own iPhone Mirroring rather than extra hardware. The cloud side, launched in November 2026, is in open beta. A disclosure: we make Carly, an AI assistant that makes and answers calls and texts, which is a different job from operating a phone’s apps. Everything below comes from Phone Harness’s site, README, docs and terms, plus its Y Combinator listing.
Phone Harness at a glance
Checked against Phone Harness’s site, GitHub README, docs, terms and Y Combinator profile on November 12, 2026.
| Phone Harness | |
|---|---|
| What it is | An open-source harness that lets AI agents control phones, plus hosted cloud phones |
| Open source | MIT licensed, about 4,900 GitHub stars, created August 2026 |
| Your iPhone | Through iPhone Mirroring on a Mac (macOS 15+, iOS 18+) |
| Your Android | Over adb from macOS, Linux or Windows |
| Cloud | Android emulators at 5¢ a minute; real iPhones from $64 a month billed annually |
| Works with | Claude Code, Codex, Grok Bot, Hermes Agent, OpenClaw and MCP clients |
| Company | Phone Harness Inc., Delaware; Y Combinator Fall 2026 |
What Phone Harness does
The homepage sums it up: “Let your AI agent tap, type, and scroll through the apps on your iPhone or Android.” The agent “uses the phone interface, just like you do. No jailbreak, no API, no app to install.”
Its README shows a demo task that captures the idea: “Buy me a Waymo to Delah Coffee from my current location.” Its Y Combinator listing gives the reasoning: “Plenty of apps have no web version, or a much worse one. If it runs on a phone, your agent can use it.” Mobile apps also keep you signed in for months, so an agent doesn’t have to sign in again on every run.
The founder pitched it at launch as a way for agents to test mobile apps, send messages, make calls and retrieve two-factor codes, according to RuntimeWire.
How it reads and controls a phone
Phone Harness gives the agent two kinds of “eyes,” per the homepage: vision OCR, which reads text from screenshots, or the phone’s accessibility tree, which lists the elements on screen. “Real input for hands.”
The agent works through a small set of helper functions, such as opening an app, finding text on screen, tapping it, typing and reading the screen. A typical step looks like this: the agent wants to open Weather, finds the word “Weather” on screen, taps its position and reads the new screen to confirm the forecast is up. The agent can also save its own helpers in a workspace for tasks it repeats.
iPhone through iPhone Mirroring. On a Mac with macOS 15 or later, Apple’s iPhone Mirroring shows your iPhone’s screen in a window and lets you control it. Phone Harness drives that window, “even in the background,” which means no cables, no Xcode and nothing installed on the phone. It needs Accessibility and Screen Recording permission on the Mac and an iPhone on iOS 18 or later.
Android over adb. Android phones connect with Android’s standard debugging bridge and USB debugging, from macOS, Linux or Windows.
Setup
Setup is designed to be done by your agent. You send it a setup prompt, and it installs the command-line tool with uv on Python 3.12, registers Phone Harness as a skill, asks which phone to use, and walks you through the steps that need your hands, such as granting permissions. A phone-harness doctor command checks that everything works.
There are also plugins for Hermes Agent and OpenClaw, and a hosted MCP server at mcp.phone-harness.com, which works with cloud phones only for now.
Phone Harness Cloud
Phone Harness Cloud, in open beta, hosts phones so you don’t need one on your desk. “Hosted iPhones and Androids, or your own. Same harness, same skill, from anywhere.”
- Android phones on demand. A fresh emulator per session, or a saved phone that keeps its apps and logins.
- Dedicated real iPhones. Running on Macs the company operates, driven over HTTPS from any operating system, with an optional eSIM for a real phone number.
- A live viewer. Watch the phone in your browser while the agent works.
- An API and MCP server. Start a phone for a set time, use it, and end the session. Ending a session deletes a temporary phone and its data.
The cloud’s pitch leans into realism. The homepage says “Real hardware. Apps see a person,” and promises real phone numbers with SMS and two-factor codes handled.
Pricing
Phone Harness Cloud’s pricing:
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | $0 a month | Cloud Android at 5¢ a phone-minute, $5 of credit to start |
| Plus | $20 a month | 1,000 phone-minutes included, then 4¢ a minute |
| Cloud iPhone | $80 a month, or $64 billed annually | A dedicated real iPhone, not billed by the minute |
| Cloud iPhone with eSIM | $100 a month, or $80 billed annually | Adds a real phone number |
| Scale | Contact sales | Dedicated real iPhones or Androids around the clock, volume pricing |
The open-source harness is free for your own phones. Billing for a cloud Android starts when the phone is ready.
Rules on what you can do with it
Phone Harness’s terms say to use cloud phones “only for lawful purposes and only with services whose terms allow automated or non-personal access.” They also prohibit fraud, spam, harassment, “evading bans or sanctions,” and “creating accounts in bulk against a service’s rules.” Since the cloud is marketed on looking like a real person to apps, those limits matter: many apps’ terms restrict automated access.
The company
Phone Harness Inc. is a Delaware corporation in Y Combinator’s Fall 2026 batch, founded in 2026 by Shawn Pana, its CEO. His Y Combinator profile says he was previously head of growth at Browser Use, the open-source browser agent company, and studied mathematics and computer science at UC San Diego. RuntimeWire reported that Pana launched Phone Harness on November 4, 2026, in a thread on X, after first open-sourcing the harness for personal devices. The GitHub repository was created in August 2026.
How Phone Harness compares
Phone Harness sits alongside several tools that give agents phones. TapKit also drives your own iPhone from a Mac, but through a USB cable and Bluetooth rather than iPhone Mirroring, for $49 a month per phone. Droidrun, now Mobilerun, is the other major open-source framework, with its own cloud. For hosted devices, PhoneUse, Glasshand and Phonebox rent cloud or physical phones. Phone Harness’s differences are a free, MIT-licensed harness for your own phone, the lightweight iPhone Mirroring route, and cloud Android by the minute.
If the job is phone calls and texts rather than working through apps, Carly does phone and SMS out of the box: it makes and answers calls and texts from a real business number, and handles email and calendars too, from inside ChatGPT or Claude or by text.
Who Phone Harness suits
Phone Harness is a good fit if:
- You want a free, open-source way to let Claude Code or Codex use your own phone.
- You have a Mac on macOS 15 and an iPhone on iOS 18, or an Android with USB debugging.
- You want to try a cloud Android by the minute before committing to anything.
- You’re building agent workflows in apps that have no web version.
Look elsewhere if:
- You need a long track record; the cloud launched in November 2026 and is in beta.
- You want MCP access to your own phone; the MCP server covers cloud phones only for now.
- Your plan depends on apps whose terms forbid automated access.
FAQ
What is Phone Harness?
Phone Harness is an open-source tool from Phone Harness Inc. that lets AI agents tap, type and scroll on an iPhone or Android phone. It also offers Phone Harness Cloud, a service with hosted Android and iPhone devices.
Is Phone Harness free?
The open-source harness is free and MIT licensed. Phone Harness Cloud has a free Basic plan with $5 of credit and Android at 5¢ a minute, a $20 Plus plan, and real cloud iPhones from $64 a month billed annually.
How does Phone Harness control an iPhone?
Through Apple’s iPhone Mirroring on a Mac running macOS 15 or later, with an iPhone on iOS 18 or later. Nothing is installed on the phone.
Does Phone Harness work with Claude Code?
Yes. You send Claude Code, Codex or another agent a setup prompt, and it installs Phone Harness and walks you through connecting a phone.
Who makes Phone Harness?
Phone Harness Inc., a Y Combinator Fall 2026 company founded by Shawn Pana, previously head of growth at Browser Use.
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