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

Manzanas, a new open-source Mac daemon from developer BariBariGood, lets coding agents lease and orchestrate fleets of iOS simulators across multiple Macs, with measured performance gains on an M3 Pro running macOS 26.5 and Xcode 26.5. The tool provides a YAML-based run specification, a lease system to prevent conflicts, and an exportable evidence journal, aiming to reduce overhead for AI agents that need to test iOS apps.

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.