Development Tools for Android (DTA)

A toolkit that gives AI assistants direct access to Android devices through the Model Context Protocol. Your coding agent can see the screen, read network traffic, inspect layout trees, mock responses, and interact with the app — from Android Studio, the terminal, or any MCP client.

Article: Debugging Android Apps with AI

Quick Start

Option A: Android Studio Plugin

Or: Settings → Plugins → Marketplace → search "DTA"

The plugin embeds the daemon, auto-injects sidekick into debug builds, and provides a 4-tab inspector (Layout, Network, WebSocket, MCP) — no CLI or manual setup needed.

Option B: CLI

brew tap yamsergey/packages
brew install dta-cli

Requirements: Java 21+

Auto-inject (recommended)

No project changes needed. Use the CLI or the MCP run_app tool to build and launch your app with sidekick injected automatically:

dta-cli run --project /path/to/your/android/project

This runs Gradle with an init script that adds dta-sidekick as a debugImplementation dependency, builds the APK, installs it on the device, and launches the main activity. Your AI assistant can do the same via the run_app MCP tool.

Manual (alternative)

If you prefer to add sidekick to your build files directly:

dependencies {
    debugImplementation 'io.github.yamsergey:dta-sidekick:0.9.36'
}

Sidekick auto-initializes via AndroidX Startup — no code changes beyond the dependency.

Connect your AI assistant

With the AS plugin: open the MCP tab, enable the server, pick your agent from the dropdown — it shows the exact config snippet to copy-paste. Works with Claude Code, Cursor, Android Studio Gemini, Claude Desktop, VS Code, and others.

Without the plugin (CLI only):

Claude Code

claude mcp add dta -- dta-cli mcp

Cursor

Claude Desktop

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "dta": {
      "command": "dta-cli",
      "args": ["mcp"]
    }
  }
}

What Can Your Agent Do?

Screen Analysis

DTA returns the real UI hierarchy — view classes, bounds, positions, layout parameters, Compose-specific data (composable names, recomposition counts), and DOM trees from WebViews and Chrome Custom Tabs. Unlike adb shell uiautomator dump which gives a semantic accessibility tree, your agent gets the full picture.

Network Analysis

Sidekick auto-records from app launch — HTTP requests (OkHttp), WebSocket connections, Chrome Custom Tab traffic. (A WebView's own network requests are not captured yet — its DOM, cookies and storage are.) No "start recording" button, no missed requests. Your agent can query the full history at any point.

Mocking

Create mock rules for HTTP and WebSocket from captured data or from scratch. Plug in custom adapters for programmatic control:

Sidekick.configure(
    SidekickConfig.builder()
        .httpMockAdapter { transaction, proposedResponse ->
            proposedResponse.withBody("""{"message": "mocked"}""")
        }
        .build()
)

Build & Launch

The run_app tool builds an APK with sidekick auto-injected, installs it, and launches the main activity — all from a single MCP call. No manual Gradle setup. If the tool is blocked by your environment's sandbox, it returns the exact shell commands as a fallback.

Verification

The agent can tap, swipe, input text, and press keys — then check the screen state and network traffic to confirm behavior. A full inspect-mock-interact-verify loop without leaving the conversation.

Android Studio Plugin

The DTA Inspector tool window provides four tabs:

Tab	Features
Layout	UI tree + device screenshot with hover highlighting, click-to-select, bidirectional selection sync
Network	HTTP request table with headers, bodies, timing; Custom Tab + WebView traffic
WebSocket	Connection list → message list → message detail
MCP	Enable HTTP server, pick port, per-agent config snippets with copy-to-clipboard

The plugin auto-injects dta-sidekick into debug builds via a Gradle init script — no changes to your project files.

Inspector Web Interface

dta-cli inspector-web

Open http://localhost:8080 for visual inspection with the same capabilities — layout tree, network, WebSocket, mock rule editor.

The web inspector enables bidirectional communication between developer and agent — select elements with a click instead of describing them in words.

MCP Transports

Transport	Command	Use case
stdio	dta-cli mcp	Claude Desktop, Cursor, any stdio MCP client
HTTP	dta-cli mcp serve --http --port 12321	AS Gemini, Claude Code HTTP, any Streamable HTTP client
Plugin	Enable in MCP tab	HTTP server embedded in AS, no CLI needed

Modules

Module	Description
dta-plugin	Android Studio plugin (4-tab inspector + embedded daemon + MCP server)
dta-cli	CLI interface (mcp, inspector-web, run, inspect commands)
dta-mcp	MCP server (stdio + HTTP transport, tool definitions)
dta-daemon	Javalin HTTP daemon (sidekick connection, CDP watcher, layout enrichment)
dta-sidekick	In-app inspection library (Android AAR, auto-init via AndroidX Startup)
tools-android	Core Gradle Tooling API integration
workspace-kotlin	workspace.json converter for Kotlin Language Server

CLI Reference

dta-cli --help
dta-cli <command> --help

License

Apache License 2.0 — see LICENSE.txt