espresso

espresso is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from aks-builds/quality-skills. It costs 122 tokens per session (2,704 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide to Espresso, Google's framework for testing native Android app interfaces. Native Android apps run directly on Android rather than inside a web browser or another app framework.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to test Android screens and interactions in Java or Kotlin, handle asynchronous work, troubleshoot instrumented tests, and connect them to the Android build.
Why use it?
It helps developers write UI tests that wait correctly for app work to finish, reducing failures caused by timing and background operations.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: $skill-name invocation.

Part of the quality-skills plugin — 57 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to test Android screens and interactions in Java or Kotlin, handle asynchronous work, troubleshoot instrumented tests, and connect them to the Android build.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/aks-builds/quality-skills/espresso
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add aks-builds/quality-skills --skill espresso
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/aks-builds/quality-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install quality-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 57 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for espresso

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aks-builds/quality-skills/espresso/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/aks-builds/quality-skills/espresso)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/aks-builds/quality-skills/espresso"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aks-builds/quality-skills/espresso/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for espresso

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/aks-builds/quality-skills/espresso"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aks-builds/quality-skills/espresso.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 122 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,704 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00122 $0.02704
Opus 5 $0.00061 $0.01352
Sonnet 5 $0.00024 $0.00541
Haiku 4.5 $0.00012 $0.00270

Measured 9d ago against content hash 5c72997e6977, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

espresso scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 9d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/espresso/SKILL.md · 267 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 267 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Espresso (Android)

You are an expert in Espresso — Google's native Android UI testing framework. Your goal is to help engineers write fast, reliable Espresso tests, manage async work via IdlingResources, and integrate the instrumented tests with the Android build. Don't fabricate Espresso method names, ViewMatcher / ViewAction names, or AndroidX Test artifact names. When uncertain, point the reader to developer.android.com/training/testing and the AndroidX Test docs.

Initial Assessment

Check .agents/qa-context.md (fallback: .claude/qa-context.md) before answering. Pay attention to:

  • Android-only? — Espresso is Android-specific. For cross-platform, mention Appium as the alternative.
  • Language — Java or Kotlin. Both supported; idiomatic Kotlin tests use androidx.test.ext.junit.runners.AndroidJUnit4 and ActivityScenario.
  • Architecture under test — Espresso is great for UI behavior, weak for cross-process or system-UI interactions (use UiAutomator for those — often combined with Espresso).
  • Async work — Espresso assumes synchronization with the main thread. Background work (network, RxJava, Coroutines) needs IdlingResource for stable tests.
  • Device target — emulator (Firebase Test Lab, GitHub Actions Android emulator, local AVD) or real device (Firebase Test Lab, BrowserStack, AWS Device Farm).

If the file does not exist, ask: Java or Kotlin, what async libraries the app uses, target device strategy, and whether the app has been instrumented for setHasTransientState / IdlingResource cooperation.


Why Espresso

  • In-process, gray-box — Espresso runs in the same JVM as the app. Direct access to the activity tree, view hierarchy, and resources.
  • Auto-synchronization — Espresso waits for the main thread to be idle before each command. No sleep().
  • Fast — by far the fastest Android UI testing option once tests are running.
  • Official — Google-maintained, integrated with AndroidX Test.

When not to use Espresso:

Read the full file on GitHub · 267 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 9d ago First seen · 267 lines · 122 tokens per session scan A 5c72997e6977

Subscribe to this mod's changes

espresso is a skill published in the GitHub repository aks-builds/quality-skills (2 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 122 tokens to every session and 2,704 once invoked, about $0.0006 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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