screen-locker/docs/android-ui-automation-task.md

Task: replace blind coordinate tapping with element-targeted Android UI automation

STATUS 2026-08-10: BUILT. The tool now exists at ~/testsAndMisc/python_pkg/android_ui/ (see its README). It covers dump / find / tap / type / wait / focus with verified typing, ambiguity as an error, keyboard detection, and partial-tree retries — all exercised against the physical Pixel 6a. What remains from the spec below is the optional MCP wrapper, scroll_to(), and rolling it out to ~/todo and ~/dufs-cloud/app. Everything after this line is the original brief, kept because it records WHY each guarantee exists.

what

Every Flutter/Android app in these repos is currently driven by an agent the same bad way: screenshot -> read pixel positions by eye -> adb shell input tap <x> <y>. Replace that with a reusable tool that finds elements by identity (text, content-desc, resource-id) and taps their real bounds, and that can report what is on screen as structured text instead of an image.

why this is not a nicety

Observed in one session (2026-08-10, workout_app Firebase verification):

• Silent mis-taps. A tap at (540, 1705) intended for the password field landed with the field unfocused. The typed password went nowhere. Nothing errored — the next screenshot just showed an empty box. A no-op and a hit are indistinguishable without dumping the tree and diffing.
• Layout shift invalidates every coordinate. Opening the soft keyboard moved the email field from y=1572 to y=1319. Coordinates captured one step earlier were already wrong.
• Screenshot scaling is a manual multiply. The harness renders 1080x2400 at 900x2000, so every read coordinate needs * 1.20. One forgotten multiply is an off-screen tap.
• Screenshots are expensive. A full-page PNG per step burns far more context than the equivalent element list, and can't be grepped or asserted on.

uiautomator dump already solves this and is on every device — no new dependency:

adb shell uiautomator dump /sdcard/ui.xml
adb pull /sdcard/ui.xml
# -> <node text="Connect Firebase" class="android.widget.Button"
#           bounds="[32,1808][1048,1878]" .../>

This is how the same session recovered: dumping the tree found both EditText nodes by class and gave exact centers, and the retry worked first time.

where

New shared tool, not a per-repo copy. Two options, pick one:

• ~/testsAndMisc/python_pkg/android_ui/ — a CLI (android-ui find "Connect Firebase", android-ui tap "Connect Firebase", android-ui dump), matching how app_icons is already shared across repos.
• An MCP server exposing the same as tools, which is what makes it available to the agent without shelling out. Preferred if MCP is acceptable — the user asked for "some tool ... (mcp?) which also translates to UI".

Consumers (every repo with an Android surface):

• ~/screen-locker/stronglift_replacement/workout_app
• ~/todo
• ~/dufs-cloud/app
• any future Flutter app (this should be part of the app scaffold)

must

• find(query) -> matching elements with class, text/content-desc, bounds, center, and enabled/focused state. Match on text, content-desc, or resource-id; substring and exact.
• tap(query) -> resolves the query, taps the center of the current bounds (re-dump before every tap; never reuse a stale coordinate), and fails loudly with a non-zero exit when the query matches zero or >1 elements. Ambiguity must be an error, not a silent first-match.
• type(query, text) -> focus the field, type, then verify the field's text actually changed and fail if not. This is the specific bug that cost this session a round trip.
• dump() -> flat, greppable text list of visible elements. This replaces the screenshot for most steps.
• Waits: wait_for(query, timeout) that polls the tree, so no more blind sleep 14.
• must not: require root, an emulator, a running Flutter debug connection, or any change to app source. It must work against a plain release APK on a physical device over adb.
• optional: flutter drive / integration_test as a second backend when a debug build IS available — richer (widget keys, no dump latency), but it cannot drive a release APK, so it can't be the only path.
• optional: screenshot fallback for genuinely visual checks (theming, icon rendering) — where a picture is the point, not a workaround.

done

A verification script that drives workout_app's "connect Firebase" flow end-to-end with zero hardcoded pixel coordinates in it, and:

• passes on the current layout;
• still passes after the SYNC and OFFLINE BACKUP sections are reordered in settings_screen.dart (the test that coordinate-based automation fails);
• exits non-zero, naming the query, when an element is missing.

verify

On the physical Pixel 6a over adb, against an installed release APK — not an emulator and not a debug-only Flutter driver session.

read first

• This session's working recovery: uiautomator dump + the bounds-parsing python in the screen-locker scratchpad (ui.xml, ui2.xml).
• ~/screen-locker/CLAUDE.md — "You are NOT done until you install the new version on the phone itself", which is why agent-driven UI is on the critical path for every task in this repo.
• Note uiautomator dump returns an empty/partial tree while an animation is in flight; retry-with-backoff belongs in the tool, not in each caller.
• Observed 2026-08-10, must be handled: while a Flutter TextField holds focus, the dump returns ONLY the EditText nodes — the rest of the tree (including the button you are about to tap) is missing, and it stays missing across retries, so a naive retry loop never converges. Worse, KEYCODE_BACK to dismiss the keyboard is treated by Flutter as a route pop: it navigated out of Settings and discarded the typed credentials, twice. The tool must unfocus without popping the route (tap dead space, or dumpsys input_method to check mInputShown first) and must distinguish "tree is partial" from "element is genuinely absent" rather than reporting a false negative.