argent-tv-interact

Argent TV (Apple TV + Android TV + Fire TV)

Critical

• A TV is focus-driven, not touch-driven. Drive every interaction with describe + tv-remote + keyboard; never use gesture-* / coordinate taps — they don't apply on any TV platform.
• Always describe before navigating to find the live cursor and your target — never guess focus from a screenshot. The cursor is the focused element; on Vega the toolkit often leaves focused false and marks the highlighted item [selected], so treat [selected] as the cursor when nothing reports [focused].
• Pass the udid from list-devices — an Apple TV simulator UDID or an Android TV / Vega serial. Dispatch is automatic from the id; the same tools drive all three.

The navigation loop

1. describe — find the cursor and your target (returns the focused element + all focusable ones, not a tap tree).
2. tv-remote — move focus toward the target. Prefer one call with a path ending in select, e.g. {button:["down","right","select"]}; count rows/columns from the frames to build the path.
3. describe again to confirm. On a miss, repeat.

Tools

• describe {udid} — focus view: the focused / [selected] element + focusable elements with labels and normalized frames. The discovery tool — call before and after navigating. Empty tree → see the per-platform notes.
• tv-remote {udid, button} — D-pad / remote. button is one key or a whole path (run in one call). Keys: up/down/left/right, select, back, menu, home, playPause, plus media keys rewind/fastForward/next/previous/volumeUp/volumeDown/mute. Single: {button:"down"}; repeat: {button:"down", repeat:3}; path: {button:["up","right","select"]}.
• keyboard {udid, text} — type into the focused field (focus it with tv-remote first). Named key presses (e.g. {key:"enter"}) work on Vega; on Apple TV / Android TV move focus with tv-remote instead.
• launch-app / restart-app / reinstall-app {udid, bundleId} — bundleId from the app manifest. Vega reinstall-app takes appPath = a .vpkg.
• screenshot {udid, scale?} — Apple TV via xcrun simctl io (downscaled); Android TV / Vega host-side via adb / screencap.

Per-platform

Apple TV (tvOS simulator)

• Boot like any iOS sim (boot-device); the AX + HID daemons auto-start on the first describe / tv-remote (first call may take a few seconds). Give the RN bundle a few seconds to render before the first describe.
• Media-transport / volume keys are rejected — the sim's HID stack ignores them (they work on Android TV / Vega).
• Dev build: open-url {udid, url:"<scheme>://expo-development-client/?url=http%3A%2F%2F<HOST_IP>%3A8081"} (<HOST_IP> = your Mac's LAN IP, shown on the launcher).

Android TV (leanback emulator)

• Boot the leanback AVD like any emulator — see argent-android-emulator-setup.
• describe may report zero focusables on a screen with visible tiles: many react-native-tvos screens use RN's own focus engine, invisible to the OS accessibility tree. describe auto-falls-back to the full UI tree (and says so in the hint); tv-remote still moves focus, so drive blind + screenshot to confirm.
• Dev build: adb -s <serial> reverse tcp:8081 tcp:8081, deep-link <pkg>://expo-development-client/?url=http%3A%2F%2F10.0.2.2%3A8081, dismiss the first dev-menu with adb shell input keyevent KEYCODE_DPAD_CENTER (not Back — Back exits the app).

Fire TV (Vega / VVD)

• list-devices shows a serial (use as udid) and a vvdImage. boot-device {vvdImage} (e.g. "tv") starts the single SDK-managed VVD; skip if one already runs.
• Stop the VVD with vega virtual-device stop in your shell. The CLI only tracks VVDs it started in the foreground, so it may report "not running" for one started via boot-device; to restart that one use boot-device {vvdImage, force:true} (stops then re-boots).
• Empty describe tree → restart-app (the automation toolkit attaches at launch), then retry. Input ignored → enable developer mode in the VVD: vsm developer-mode enable.
• Editing node_modules has no effect on a Release build — only Debug .vpkg builds load patchable JS.
• Profiling / crashes → amazon-devices-buildertools-mcp server (analyze_perfetto_traces, get_app_hot_functions, symbolicate_acr); docs via its search_documentation tool.

Common gotchas

• Empty focus right after launch-app / restart-app is the splash / loading window — describe retries internally; wait ~2-3s and retry on a cold start.
• Passing a phone/tablet (runtimeKind: "mobile") udid to tv-remote fails with a clear "tvOS-only" / "Android-TV-only" error — pick a TV target from list-devices.

Fast Refresh (dev builds)

Needs a Debug build + Metro running. argent only connects to Metro — start Metro and port-forward yourself (any platform). Metro is fixed on :8081.

• Apple TV / Android TV: use the dev-build deep-links above; npm start for Metro.
• Vega: build/install a Debug .vpkg (vega device install-app -p <path>), npm start, vega device start-port-forwarding --port 8081 --forward false, then vega device launch-app -a <appId>. Confirm http://localhost:8081/json/list shows a Hermes React Native target; .tsx edits then hot-reload.