run-simulator

run-simulator is a skill for Claude Code from rshankras/claude-code-apple-skills. It costs 60 tokens per session (1,774 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A command-line process for building an iOS app, installing it in Apple's Simulator, launching it, and taking a screenshot of the running app.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to verify visual changes, reproduce interface issues, or confirm an iPhone or iPad flow without relying only on compilation.
Why use it?
A successful build only shows that code compiles; this checks that the app actually starts and displays the expected screen.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter. Also seen: positional $N argument.

Part of the apple-skills plugin — 147 skills shipped together , and of apple-skills

Good fit Use it to verify visual changes, reproduce interface issues, or confirm an iPhone or iPad flow without relying only on compilation.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/rshankras/claude-code-apple-skills/run-simulator
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 rshankras/claude-code-apple-skills --skill run-simulator
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/rshankras/claude-code-apple-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install apple-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 147 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 run-simulator

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/rshankras/claude-code-apple-skills/run-simulator.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/rshankras/claude-code-apple-skills/run-simulator)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/rshankras/claude-code-apple-skills/run-simulator"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/rshankras/claude-code-apple-skills/run-simulator.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 60 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,774 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 3 findings, up to medium

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • medium Rogue Agent · line 100
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 101
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 101
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
How audits are shown
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 $0.00060 $0.01774
Opus 5 $0.00030 $0.00887
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00355
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00177

Measured 5d ago against content hash 826293e4f658, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

run-simulator 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 5d 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/ios/run-simulator/SKILL.md · 176 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 176 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Run in Simulator

Launches the actual app in the iOS Simulator and drives it far enough to see what a user would see. Building proves the code compiles; this skill proves it runs. The payoff is a screenshot of the live app that you read back to confirm the change — a blank or crashed frame is a failure, not a pass.

This skill is generic. Nothing about a specific app is hardcoded — the scheme, simulator, product path, and bundle id are all discovered at runtime.

When This Skill Activates

Use this skill when the user:

  • Asks to "run", "launch", or "open" the app in the simulator
  • Wants to see a change working, not just compile it
  • Asks for a screenshot of the running app
  • Wants to verify a UI fix visually before committing or pushing
  • Says "does this actually work?" about a view/flow they just changed

Do not use it for unit/UI test runs (xcodebuild test) — that's a different goal. This is about meeting the app as a user would.

Process

Run the steps in order. Each step's output feeds the next, so don't hardcode values a previous step can discover.

1. Discover the project and scheme

Prefer a workspace over a bare project when both exist (CocoaPods/SPM setups often require the workspace):

# Find the container
ls *.xcworkspace 2>/dev/null || ls *.xcodeproj 2>/dev/null

# List schemes (use -workspace X.xcworkspace OR -project X.xcodeproj)
xcodebuild -list -project <App>.xcodeproj 2>/dev/null

Pick the app scheme (usually matches the app name). If several schemes look plausible and none clearly matches, ask the user which to run rather than guessing.

2. Pick a simulator destination

Never hardcode a device name — the named device may not exist on this Mac (e.g. assuming "iPhone 16" when only "iPhone 17 Pro" is installed fails with "Unable to find a device matching the provided destination specifier"). List what's actually available and prefer one already booted:

# Already-booted sim, if any (fastest — skip the boot wait)
xcrun simctl list devices booted

# Otherwise, available iPhones to choose from
xcrun simctl list devices available | grep -i iphone

Read the full file on GitHub · 176 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. 5d ago First seen · 176 lines · 60 tokens per session scan A 826293e4f658

Subscribe to this mod's changes

run-simulator is a skill published in the GitHub repository rshankras/claude-code-apple-skills (710 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 60 tokens to every session and 1,774 once invoked, about $0.0003 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 2026-09-03.