# Show HN: Manzanas - a dozen iOS simulators on one Mac, leased to coding agents

> Source: <https://github.com/BariBariGood/manzanas>
> Published: 2026-09-01 13:01:39+00:00

A Mac daemon for multi-agent iOS simulator fleet orchestration: leases, actions, streaming, deterministic state, and an exportable run journal for AI agents (and humans) sharing simulators.

**The 90% story: lease a simulator, run a YAML spec, get evidence.**
Everything else, fleets, physical phones, mirroring, is an opt-in
chapter you can ignore until you need it.

## promo.mp4

*1 orchestrator, 7 Codex agents, 7 simulators across 3 Macs, leases mean
nobody trips over anybody. Real time, no edits.*

`manzanasd`

runs on each Mac host and owns everything stateful, the
simulator registry, the lease table, the warm pool, action backends,
streamers, golden images, and the run journal. Clients (`manzanas`

CLI, MCP
facade, SDKs) are thin and cross-platform, speaking a versioned JSON
protocol over HTTP + WebSocket.

**Website: manzanas.dapsdev.dev** (source in

[).](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/site)

`site/`

No flags to read, no config to write. Four layers, start at whichever matches your machine:

```
npx manzanasd-client@latest doctor   # downloads the release binary and runs the setup diagnosis
```

The npm wrapper fetches the right `manzanasd`

/`manzanas`

binary for your
platform on install, then proxies every command to it. Use it as the CLI,
or point your agent's MCP config at `manzanas mcp`

.

```
make build                      # writes bin/manzanasd, bin/manzanas, bin/manzanas-broker
./bin/manzanasd --mock          # full daemon + fake fleet + mock action backend
```

In another terminal, run the whole lease → boot → act → evidence loop as one declarative YAML run:

```
# hello.yaml, drives the mock login screen (docs/mock.md)
name: hello
target:
  labels: [ios26]
steps:
  - action: type_into_element
    with: {id: username, text: agent}
  - action: type_into_element
    with: {id: password, text: pw}
  - action: tap_element
    with: {label: "Sign In"}
  - action: wait_for_element
    with: {label: "Welcome, agent!", timeout_ms: 5000}
./bin/manzanas run hello.yaml -o evidence.md
cat evidence.md                 # PR-ready markdown evidence of every step
```

That's the product: one spec, one command, a journaled evidence trail. The same spec runs unchanged against real simulators, and against physical phones, because every target speaks the same actions API.

```
brew tap baribarigood/tap https://github.com/BariBariGood/homebrew-tap
brew trust baribarigood/tap      # Homebrew >= 6 requires trusting third-party taps
brew install manzanasd            # daemon (+ pulls in the manzanas CLI)
brew services start manzanasd     # launchd service on port 7433
manzanas doctor                   # one-shot setup diagnosis; every failure names its fix
```

`manzanasd`

needs **zero flags** for a working single-Mac daemon:
sensible defaults for the journal, template library, and element map,
simulators enumerated from `simctl`

, physical devices and the mirror off
until you opt in. The same `manzanas run spec.yaml`

now drives real
simulators. Step-by-step walkthrough (lease, tap, screenshot, release by
hand): [docs/quickstart.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/quickstart.md).

```
manzanas targets                                        # list simulators
manzanas lease acquire --labels ios26 --agent me --wait # claim one
manzanas tap 200 400 --lease lse_...                    # drive it
manzanas mcp                                            # or hand the tools to an agent
```

**Physical iPhones**(WebDriverAgent):[docs/devices.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/devices.md)** XCTest-hostile apps**via iPhone Mirroring:[docs/mirror-onboarding.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/mirror-onboarding.md)** Multiple Macs behind one endpoint**:[docs/broker.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/broker.md)

Agents driving simulators over raw SSH + CLI tools trip over each other
and pay huge fixed costs. manzanasd removes both, with measured numbers
(M3 Pro, macOS 26.5, Xcode 26.5; reproduce with `make bench`

):

**Leases, not locks**: TTL-bounded exclusive claims with FIFO queues, no two agents ever drive the same sim.** Park/thaw warm pool**: idle sims are SIGSTOPped (a parked tree is unschedulable, ~0 idle host CPU no matter what the sim's daemons are doing) and thawed on lease grant:**~0.28 s lease-to-live vs ~7 s for a cold boot**(~29 s first boot). The thaw itself is a cached-PID SIGCONT and takes under a millisecond.** Warm actions**: a resident per-sim helper makes an end-to-end tap**~36 ms vs ~950 ms** cold (per-action AXe spawn), ~3 s cold on Intel.**Deterministic state**: snapshots, fixtures, per-lease auto-reset, and golden images that stamp out slimmed sims in seconds (**~0.75 GB vs ~5 GB stock**, via[simslim](https://github.com/MobAI-App/simslim)), how one Mac runs a dozen sims.** Evidence**: every mutating op under a lease is journaled, with content-addressed artifacts and a PR-ready markdown export.

| Leases | TTL-bounded exclusive claims, labels, FIFO queues, auto-reset, pause/resume for human handoff |
| Warm pool | park/thaw (SIGSTOP) pool sims: ~0.28 s lease-to-live, ~0 idle CPU |
| Actions | cold (AXe) + warm (resident helper) taps/swipes/typing, composite `tap_element` with a structured predicate DSL, list-scrolling composites (`scroll_until` /`scroll_collect` ), pixel templates (`save_template` /`tap_template` ), batches |
| Verification | `assert_text` /`assert_template` postconditions, opt-in pixel-verified taps, `wait_for_stable` pixel settle, run verdicts + replay drift detection |
| Runs | one-call YAML runs: lease → boot → app → steps → evidence → release (
|

[, WS frames](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/assets/live-view.png)`/view`

page`simctl`

recordings that land in the journal`export.md`

, replayable spec export[web dashboard](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/assets/dashboard.png)at`/dash`

: fleet, leases, multiview, journal browser`manzanas doctor`

: one-shot host diagnosis, every failing check carries its fix`manzanas-broker`

federates N Macs behind one endpoint`manzanas`

CLI, MCP tools over stdio, npm wrapper, GitHub Actionthe browser `/view` MJPEG live page |
the built-in `/dash` fleet dashboard |

`manzanas mcp`

serves the whole toolset over the Model Context Protocol
(stdio), so any MCP-capable agent can lease and drive simulators, with
per-session auto-release of leases and self-describing tool errors.
Ready-to-paste client configs and troubleshooting:
[docs/mcp.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/mcp.md).

```
claude mcp add manzanas -e MANZANASD_ADDR=mac-host:7433 -- /path/to/manzanas mcp
┌ Linux / CI / anywhere ────────────┐        ┌ each Mac host ─────────────────────────────┐
│ manzanas (thin client, Go)         │   WS   │ manzanasd (Go daemon)  :7433                │
│  - CLI: lease/tap/observe/...     │◄──────►│  registry ── warm pool (park/thaw, gates)  │
│  - MCP facade (stdio)             │  HTTP  │  leases (TTL, labels, FIFO, auto-reset)    │
│  - eval harness (manzanas-eval)    │        │  actions ── cold AXe / warm simbridge      │
├───────────────────────────────────┤        │  streams (MJPEG fan-out, browser view)     │
│ manzanas-broker  :7440             │        │  state (snapshots, fixtures, golden images)│
│  fleet-wide placement: leases are │───────►│  journal (evidence, artifacts, export.md)  │
│  scheduled across N daemons, then │ probe/ └────────────────────────────────────────────┘
│  clients talk to the owning       │ lease         × one daemon per Mac in the fleet
│  daemon directly (host_addr)      │
└───────────────────────────────────┘
```

One orchestration core, transports as thin backends: the same YAML spec,
leases, journal, and evidence pipeline run against simulators
(AXe/simctl), physical iPhones (WebDriverAgent), and XCTest-hostile apps
(iPhone Mirroring). What manzanas is *not*, a generic OCR automation
framework, an app-botting tool, is written down in
[docs/non-goals.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/non-goals.md), along with why the repo stays
one repo.

**Start here** (the 90% path):

[docs/quickstart.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/quickstart.md), zero to a passing run on one Mac: install → doctor → lease → tap → screenshot → YAML run.[docs/runs.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/runs.md), the one-call YAML run: schema, verdicts, drift detection, record → replay.[docs/mock.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/mock.md), the full daemon anywhere (Linux/CI), no Mac needed.[docs/journal.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/journal.md), the evidence trail: run journal format, artifacts, markdown export, replayable spec export.[docs/mcp.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/mcp.md), handing the tools to an agent (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex).[docs/troubleshooting.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/troubleshooting.md),`manzanas doctor`

first, then symptoms → causes → fixes.

**Going deeper** (read when you hit the subsystem):

[proto/PROTOCOL.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/proto/PROTOCOL.md), the v0 wire protocol: targets, leases, actions, streams, state, journal, runs, WS surface. The tables in §5 are the authoritative list of action kinds and payloads.[docs/architecture.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/architecture.md), components, interface contracts, and the product boundary.[docs/agent-qa.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/agent-qa.md), a worked end-to-end agent QA session, plus driving animated (React Native) apps.[docs/resolver-ladder.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/resolver-ladder.md), how element resolution works: map/ax/ocr/template rungs, provenance, escalation.[docs/elementmap.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/elementmap.md), the learned element map (fast-path resolution across runs).[docs/templates.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/templates.md), the pixel-template library (`save_template`

/`tap_template`

/`assert_template`

).[docs/warm-pool.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/warm-pool.md), park/thaw warm pool, footprint watchdog, host safety gates.[docs/actions-warm.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/actions-warm.md), warm vs cold action paths; the resident`simbridge`

helper.[docs/state.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/state.md), snapshots, fixtures, per-lease auto-reset, quarantine.[docs/images.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/images.md), golden images: slim once, stamp N sims in seconds.[docs/streaming.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/streaming.md), MJPEG streaming and the browser view page.[docs/dashboard.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/dashboard.md), the built-in read-only web dashboard at`/dash`

.[docs/recording.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/recording.md), per-lease video capture into the journal.[docs/eval.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/eval.md), the scenario-driven determinism benchmark harness.[clients/README.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/clients/README.md),`manzanas`

CLI + MCP quickstarts;[clients/npm/](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/clients/npm/README.md); GitHub Action in[action/](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/action/README.md).

**You probably don't need these yet** (opt-in surfaces; each page opens
with who it's for):

[docs/non-goals.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/non-goals.md), the product boundary: what manzanas is, what it deliberately is not, and the one future split candidate.[docs/devices.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/devices.md), physical iPhones as leasable targets (devicectl + WebDriverAgent), and the mirror backend reference.[docs/mirror-onboarding.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/mirror-onboarding.md), the guided setup path for driving XCTest-hostile apps through iPhone Mirroring.[docs/broker.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/broker.md), multi-Mac federation.[docs/fleet.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/fleet.md), running a multi-Mac fleet (topology, Tailscale, day-2 ops).[docs/install.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/install.md), launchd install, releases, Homebrew formula.

The physical fleet this runs on (machines, locks, build caching) is
site-specific; [docs/fleet.md](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/docs/fleet.md) covers the daemon's part.

Everything above is implemented and running on the fleet, leases +
queues (incl. pause/resume), warm pool with safety gates, cold (AXe) +
warm (simbridge) action backends, composite/batch/assert actions, the
resolver ladder with element map and pixel templates, one-call YAML runs
with verdicts and drift detection, MJPEG streaming, video capture,
snapshots/fixtures/auto-reset, golden images, journal, dashboard, doctor,
physical-device support (WDA + mirror), broker, eval harness, CLI + MCP.
Verify with `go build ./... && go vet ./... && go test ./...`

(Linux-safe; simctl paths are mocked).

Apache-2.0, see [LICENSE](/BariBariGood/manzanas/blob/main/LICENSE). Releases up to and including v0.6.0
(and their existing tags) were published under MIT and remain MIT; later
releases are Apache-2.0.