Conductor is a token-efficient CLI for driving and inspecting running apps, built for AI agents. It is a TypeScript reimplementation and partial fork of Maestro that ships its own native drivers, so there is no external CLI to install and no JVM to configure.
It gives a coding agent the ability to operate an app while writing the code for it: navigate the UI, read the live view hierarchy, take screenshots, run flows, and drive several devices in parallel across concurrent agents.
conductor launch-app com.example.myapp
conductor tap-on "Sign In"
conductor input-text "user@example.com"
conductor assert-visible "Dashboard"
conductor take-screenshot --output /tmp/screen.pngTargets iOS and tvOS simulators, physical iOS/tvOS devices, Android emulators and devices, Amazon Fire TV, and web via Playwright.
npm install -g @houwert/conductorConductor is a pure CLI. To teach an AI agent how to use it, install the bundled skills into your repository:
conductor init # interactive: pick scope + skills, writes to .claude/skills/
conductor init --yes # non-interactive: install all skills into ./.claude/skills/
conductor init --global # install into ~/.claude/skills/ for all repos
conductor init --force # re-sync skills you have already installedinit is the one manual setup step — run it once per repository. In a terminal it prompts for which skills and where; piped or headless (CI, agent) it installs everything non-interactively. It writes a set of capability-scoped Claude Code skills — conductor-device-interact, conductor-inspect, conductor-create-flow, conductor-native, conductor-metro-debugger, conductor-profiler and conductor-device-setup — documenting every command and the act → observe → act workflow.
After upgrading conductor, re-run conductor init --force to re-sync the installed skills. init stamps the version it installed, so it can tell you when they are stale and prune skills no longer shipped. Integrating another way (a custom CLAUDE.md, a slash command) works equally well.
Run conductor --help for the full command reference, or conductor <command> --help for per-command flags.
| Capability | Commands |
|---|---|
| App lifecycle | launch-app, stop-app, clear-state, install-app, uninstall-app, foreground-app, copy-app, download-app |
| Interaction | tap-on, input-text, scroll, scroll-until-visible, swipe, gesture, pinch, press-key, erase-text, hide-keyboard |
| Inspection | inspect, focused, capture-ui, take-screenshot, list-apps |
| Assertions | assert-visible, assert-not-visible, assert-true, assert-screenshot |
| Navigation | open-link, back |
| Flows | run-flow, run-flow-inline, run-parallel, run-sequence, flow |
| Devices | start-device, stop-device, list-devices, device-pool, set-location, set-orientation, set-permissions |
| Debugging | logs, crashes, network, memory, profile, metro, record-video, stream-server |
| In-process (iOS/tvOS) | native-inspect, native-find, native-set, native-eval, native-heap, and more |
| Test cases | cases |
| Web setup | install-web [browser] (installs a Playwright browser; --check prints status) |
| Discovery | list-options [command] / <command> --options, workspace |
Conductor Studio is a desktop app (Electron + React) built on this CLI. It does three jobs: writing and managing Maestro tests, writing them with an agent, and tracking them as test cases.
It provides a flow editor with autocomplete and linting, a live device stream with element picking and a record mode that turns your interactions into flow steps, an agentic test writer that verifies described behaviour on a device and files a visual report, and local test case management. Light and dark, signed and notarized, auto-updating.
Studio bundles its own copy of the conductor CLI, so it needs nothing installed globally. The version it uses can be pinned from Settings.
Download: Releases — macOS (Apple silicon). Studio releases are tagged studio-v*; the CLI's are tagged cli-v*.
See the Studio README for the full feature tour, architecture and release process.
pnpm dev:studio # run it from sourceconductor/
├── packages/
│ ├── cli/ # TypeScript CLI (@houwert/conductor)
│ ├── android-driver/ # Kotlin/Gradle instrumentation driver
│ ├── ios-driver/ # Swift/Xcode XCTest driver
│ ├── ios-inproc/ # Library injected into the app for a second inspection plane
│ ├── ios-hid/ # Host binary injecting HID below the XCTest layer
│ ├── ios-capture/ # Host binary capturing the Simulator framebuffer
│ └── studio-ui/ # Design system for Conductor Studio
├── apps/
│ └── studio/ # Conductor Studio — the desktop app
└── Makefile
- Node.js and pnpm 10
- iOS/tvOS: Xcode with command-line tools
- Android: Android SDK with
adbonPATH
make buildBuilds the iOS and tvOS XCTest drivers, the in-process library and capture binary (xcodebuild), and the Android driver (Gradle); packages them all into the CLI and compiles TypeScript. Then link it globally:
cd packages/cli && pnpm link --globalIf the drivers are already built and packaged:
cd packages/cli
pnpm install && pnpm buildmake build-cli # CLI TypeScript only
make build-ios-driver # iOS XCTest driver
make build-android-driver # Android instrumentation driver
make package-cli # Bundle drivers into CLI packagepnpm dev # TypeScript watch mode
pnpm lint # ESLint + Prettier check
pnpm lint:fix # Auto-fix formatting
pnpm test # Run test suite- iOS/tvOS: Xcode with a booted simulator, or a paired physical device
- Android:
adbonPATHwith a running emulator or connected device - Web: a Playwright browser (
conductor install-web)