xcode

A command-line guide for controlling Xcode, Apple's development tool for building apps for Apple platforms. It also covers simulators and connected devices.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to run builds and tests, launch apps, create archives, inspect schemes and destinations, and manage simulators or physical devices.
Why use it?
It provides a consistent way to build, test, run, clean, and archive an Xcode project from an agent.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/marcelrgberger/xcode-cli/xcode
Any agent
npx skills add marcelrgberger/xcode-cli --skill xcode
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/marcelrgberger/xcode-cli

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 129 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,485 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00129 $0.01485
Opus 5 $0.00064 $0.00743
Sonnet 5 $0.00026 $0.00297
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00148

Measured yesterday against content hash 475517f6e35c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

xcode 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 yesterday.

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/xcode/SKILL.md · 152 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 152 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Xcode CLI Skill

Control Xcode from Claude — build, test, run, clean, archive, and manage simulators and devices.

Prerequisites

The xcode-cli command must be installed. If not available, install it automatically:

which xcode-cli || (cd ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/agent-harness && python3 -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate && pip install -e . && echo "xcode-cli installed")

If a venv already exists, activate it:

test -f ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/agent-harness/.venv/bin/activate && source ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/agent-harness/.venv/bin/activate

System requirements:

  • macOS with Xcode installed
  • Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install)
  • Python 3.10+

Command Syntax

Command Action
/xcode build Build the active scheme
/xcode test Run tests
/xcode run Build and run
/xcode clean Clean build
/xcode stop Stop running action
/xcode archive Create archive
/xcode schemes List schemes
/xcode destinations List run destinations
/xcode simulators List simulators
/xcode devices List physical devices
/xcode open <path> Open workspace/project
/xcode status Show session status

CLI Command Reference

Workspace operations:

xcode-cli --json workspace list
xcode-cli --json workspace open "/path/to/Project.xcodeproj"
xcode-cli --json workspace schemes
xcode-cli --json workspace destinations
xcode-cli --json workspace projects
xcode-cli --json workspace targets [--project "ProjectName"]
xcode-cli --json workspace settings [--target "TargetName"] [--config "Debug"]
xcode-cli --json workspace active

Build operations:

xcode-cli --json build build [--scheme "MyApp"] [--destination "..."] [--config "Release"]
xcode-cli --json build run [--scheme "MyApp"] [--destination "..."]
xcode-cli --json build test [--scheme "MyApp"] [--destination "..."] [--test-plan "MyTests"]
xcode-cli --json build clean [--scheme "MyApp"]
xcode-cli --json build stop
xcode-cli --json build archive [--scheme "MyApp"] [--output "/path/to/MyApp.xcarchive"]
xcode-cli --json build status
xcode-cli --json build errors
xcode-cli --json build warnings
xcode-cli --json build test-failures
xcode-cli --json build log

Read the full file on GitHub · 152 lines

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. yesterday First seen · 152 lines · 129 tokens per session scan A 475517f6e35c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

xcode is a skill published in the GitHub repository marcelrgberger/xcode-cli (2 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 129 tokens to every session and 1,485 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.