droidpool

Disk-light Android emulator clones for parallel AI agents. An agent asks for a device ("clean" or "signed-in", API 35) and gets an adb serial. Each device is an APFS clone of a frozen base AVD, so it costs roughly the data it writes. Devices are deleted on release, or when the agent that leased them disappears.

Mac (APFS) only in v1. Uses the stock Android emulator; 36.5.11 is the tested version.

Install

npm install
ln -sf "$PWD/src/cli.ts" ~/.local/bin/droidpool        # any directory on PATH
ln -sf "$PWD/src/mcp.ts" ~/.local/bin/droidpool-mcp
claude mcp add droidpool --scope user -- ~/.local/bin/droidpool-mcp

npm link also works when npm's global bin directory is on PATH. Use --scope user so every project gets the tools; without it the server is registered for the current project only. Register the absolute path so the server starts regardless of the agent's PATH.

Then paste guidance/agents.md into ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md so agents use droidpool and not emulator or avdmanager. Sessions that were already running see the tools after a restart.

Requires Node >= 22.18 and an Android SDK (ANDROID_SDK_ROOT, ANDROID_HOME, or ~/Library/Android/sdk) with the emulator, platform-tools and cmdline-tools.

Environment:

• DROIDPOOL_HOME: state, AVDs and logs. Default ~/.droidpool. droidpool never reads or writes ~/.android/avd.

• ANDROID_SDK_ROOT / ANDROID_HOME: SDK location.

Related MCP server: android-emulator

Building bases

A base is a frozen AVD plus its Quickboot snapshot, one per (flavor, API). get never builds one; a missing base is an error that names the command to run.

droidpool base build clean              # google_apis, API 35
droidpool base build signed-in          # google_apis_playstore, API 35
droidpool base list
droidpool base rm base-clean-35

Building takes a few minutes (system image install if missing, first boot, snapshot). For signed-in, the build pauses so you can sign into the Google account once; every clone starts signed in. Each base records the emulator version it was built with. If the SDK emulator changes, get refuses until you rebuild.

CLI

droidpool get [--clean|--signed-in] [--api N] [--project P]   # prints the serial
droidpool release <serial>
droidpool renew <serial>      # extend a CLI lease
droidpool show <serial>       # open a scrcpy mirror window on the device
droidpool ls
droidpool gc                  # reap expired leases, dead emulators, orphan clones
droidpool doctor              # bases, devices, free disk, emulator version mismatches

CLI leases expire after 2 hours unless renewed. Devices taken through the MCP server survive for 2 minutes after that server process exits, so a reconnecting session can reclaim them with reuse_serial. After that they are reaped.

MCP tools

• get_device: flavor (clean | signed-in), api, project (absolute path), reuse_serial. Returns { serial, deviceId, flavor, api }. Waits up to 90 s if the pool is full (max 3 devices), then fails.

• release_device: serial.

• show_device: serial. Opens a scrcpy mirror window so the user can watch or interact.

• list_devices.

Devices have no window of their own. show mirrors one with scrcpy v5.0.1, which droidpool downloads once from the official GitHub release into ~/.droidpool/tools and checks against its pinned SHA-256 (Homebrew is not used). It talks to the SDK's adb, so it does not start a second adb server. The window closes when the device is released.

Launch flags are owned by droidpool (-avd <id> -port <p> -no-snapshot-save -no-boot-anim -no-window), so snapshots stay valid.

How the disk model works

cp -c -R (APFS clonefile) copies a base AVD without copying its blocks. Spike results (M1 Max, 32 GB):

• Cloning a 4.8 GB AVD directory took 0.23 s and used 0 MB of disk.

• After rewriting the AVD name and paths in snapshots/default_boot/hardware.ini and writing a matching <name>.ini, the clone loaded the default_boot snapshot.

• Clone and original ran at the same time on different ports.

• A clone that wrote 200 MB in the guest freed 245 MB when deleted: per-device cost is about what it writes.

• The 3.5 GB ram.bin stays shared and is never rewritten.

• Clone resume took 6.5 to 10.8 s (host load 14 to 17), against about 5 s for the original.

Free space inside a guest is not returned to the host (fstrim needs root on google_apis), which is fine because devices are short-lived. If cloning fails, droidpool aborts; it never falls back to a full copy. get also checks free disk first (1.2 x the 6 GiB data partition, plus 2 GiB margin), since the emulator refuses to start without that room.

Smoke test

DROIDPOOL_E2E=1 node scripts/e2e.ts

Uses a temp DROIDPOOL_HOME, builds a clean base, gets two devices, checks both boot and load the snapshot, writes 200 MB in one, releases both, and prints boot seconds and freed MB. Needs about 15 GB free and ports 5620-5700 unused. It also asserts that ~/.android/avd is unchanged and that no emulator process from the run outlives its release. Without DROIDPOOL_E2E=1 it exits 0 immediately.

Measured

Pending first live run.

Known unknowns

Open questions to settle by measurement:

1. Concurrent signed-in clones: does Google flag or sign out the account when several clones of one signed-in device run at once (shared Android ID and GSF ID)? If so, signed-in is limited to one device at a time.

2. Window mode: does adding or removing -no-window affect snapshot validity? If so, a watch mode needs its own base.

3. Real per-device disk cost over a realistic agent session (app install, test run).

4. Base RAM size: 4 GB gives a 3.5 GB ram.bin. Would 3 GB give smaller bases and fit more devices in host RAM?

5. Maximum concurrent devices: default 3 on a 32 GB host; confirm under real load.

6. Clone resume time: 6.5 to 10.8 s against 5 s for the original. Cold page cache on the shared ram.bin, or host load?

Not in v1

Linux (reflinks or qcow2 overlays), Windows, remote pools, physical devices, GUI.