Why

Repeated control commands reconnect to the preview server. Let agents keep the connection ready between commands.

How

Add an optional local helper and share action preparation, uploads, downloads and execution. Ordinary control commands reuse the helper when available. The idle timeout defaults to 120 seconds.

eas simulator:control:connection open --idle-timeout 300
eas simulator:control appearance.set dark
eas simulator:control:connection status --id <session-id> --json
eas simulator:control:connection close

# Or keep the connection after an action:
eas simulator:control hardwareKeyboard.set off --keep-alive --idle-timeout 30

--idle-timeout takes seconds. Closing the connection leaves the simulator session running. Keep-alive supports macOS and Linux; ordinary commands still work on Windows. Control import (#4686) and start import (#4687) use this shared executor.

Test Plan

Codex ran 1,020 account, simulator and help tests, a clean build and typecheck on the rebased full stack. Scoped lint and formatting pass. Each feature patch is unchanged by the main-only rebase. Devin completed with no new findings. Node 22/24 CI passed on this head.

Previous-head Codecov patch coverage was 94.57%, with 39 uncovered lines. Those coverage checks passed. Worker bootstrap/exit paths and some error branches remain uncovered; no coverage exclusions were added. Hosted keep-alive testing and latency measurements remain pending.

Codex also ran the final local CLI against two real hosted iOS sessions with Expo Go SDK 58. Human and JSON startup imports, settings readback, file upload/readback, Unicode clipboard, screenshots, warm connection reuse, concurrent callers, idle expiry, close/drain/reopen, and failure handling passed. Both sessions were stopped and local helpers closed. The old Coin Flip build archive returned HTTP 403, so this run used Expo Go.

Authorship and LLM use

Gabe chose the connection commands and timeout, then asked to share the control code with imports. Codex implemented the helper, moved the action executor into this layer and restacked the imports. Gabe reviewed the changes at 1899090. Codex then rebased onto current main and later corrected shutdown-test races exposed by Node 22 CI. The existing poll delay now lets the close event abort the connection before checking refusal replies. The close-caller test also retries transient probe disconnects and still checks the close acknowledgement and active-work drain. Szymon approved the earlier base at 011dfd3. Gabe subsequently tried the CLI and approved the compact help examples. These stay in the command descriptions and use normal oclif formatting. Connection and action execution code is unchanged by this update.

Astra and Opus reviews led to removing redundant authentication and validation, then fixing admission and shutdown races. Devin identified the close/reopen race. Coverage reviews corrected a masked shutdown assertion and a fake-timer race. Independent rechecks were clean on the earlier combined implementation; Codex checked the reorganized layers and preserved feature tree. Those independent reviews and hosted testing were not repeated for the split.

Gabe asked to remove custom help formatting. Codex removed the simulator help classes and restored the original help registration. Shared help and control execution are unchanged from the previous implementation.

Gabe reviewed the final changes at a15cfbf after the help cleanup.

Codex then rebased onto main 21a1684 after the account-selection change landed. Range-diff confirms all three feature patches are unchanged. A third real hosted iOS session passed startup/import, file readback, screenshots and warm-connection checks on the rebased CLI, then was stopped. The earlier real-session tests also passed close/drain/reopen and failure handling.

— Codex