Droid Control

Droid Control

Automate terminals and browsers. Three routing decisions, then atoms guide you the rest of the way.

Ground rules

1. Real apps, real environments. Non-deterministic behavior (LLM responses, network latency, variable output) is expected. Handle it with wait / wait-idle. Never substitute fixtures or mocked data. 2. Commit to execution. Once you've chosen a driver, run the plan. If something fails mid-run, recover and retry -- don't re-evaluate the approach. 3. Atoms are self-contained. Load one and follow its mechanics. No cross-referencing needed. 4. `tctl` is the ONLY way to launch recorded sessions. tctl manages recording by wrapping asciinema rec around the PTY — raw tuistory has no recording capability and never will. Never call tuistory launch directly; unknown flags crash tuistory-relay. Always resolve TCTL to its absolute filesystem path before use, especially when delegating to workers (they don't inherit ${DROID_PLUGIN_ROOT}). 5. Isolate every run. Multiple droids may be filming simultaneously on the same machine. Session names and output paths share a global namespace (/tmp/tctl-sessions/). At the start of every workflow, generate a run ID (RUN_ID=$(date +%s)-$$ or similar) and use it as a prefix for all session names and a scoped temp directory for all output files:

   RUN_ID="$(date +%s)-$$"
   RUN_DIR="$(mktemp -d /tmp/droid-run-${RUN_ID}-XXXXXX)"
   # Session names: -s ${RUN_ID}-before, -s ${RUN_ID}-after
   # Output paths: ${RUN_DIR}/before.cast, ${RUN_DIR}/after.cast

Never use bare session names like -s demo, -s before, -s after — they will collide with concurrent runs.

Routing

Three independent lookups. Do all three, then load the union of skills they produce.

1. Target route — what are you driving?

tuistory is the default for terminal work. Use true-input only when you need real terminal rendering evidence. On Linux, desktop-control rides upstream's pre-release tier -- its platform file documents the Wayland/AT-SPI/input caveats and when to fall back to agent-browser or true-input.

2. Stage route — what does the workflow need?

Every workflow passes through stages. Load the atoms for each stage you'll use.

3. Artifact route — does compose need polish tools?

Only relevant when compose is loaded.

Workflow shape

Command (intent + commitments)
  → Target route (load driver atoms)
  → Capture (record / screenshot / byte-capture)
  → Compose (assemble deliverable, if needed)
  → Verify (check against commitments)
  → Report

Commands declare what to produce. Atoms own how.

Layout default

Default: `single`. One clip showing the target/final state. Pick this unless the deliverable is fundamentally a comparison.

Do not synthesize a "before" state to justify side-by-side. If there is no real baseline, use single.

Delegation

The parent agent plans and orchestrates. Mechanical work runs in worker subagents via the Task tool. This keeps the parent's context clean and enables parallelism.

What to delegate

How to delegate

Step 0: Resolve paths and generate a run ID. Workers don't inherit ${DROID_PLUGIN_ROOT}. Resolve once, paste everywhere:

TCTL="$(realpath "${DROID_PLUGIN_ROOT}/bin/tctl")"
RENDER="$(realpath "${DROID_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/render-showcase.sh")"
RUN_ID="$(date +%s)-$$"
RUN_DIR="$(mktemp -d /tmp/droid-run-${RUN_ID}-XXXXXX)"

Use ${RUN_DIR} for all output files (recordings, props, rendered video). Use ${RUN_ID}- as a prefix for all session names. Never use bare names like -s before or hardcoded paths like /tmp/before.cast.

Give workers exact commands with the resolved absolute paths — not abstract instructions, not tuistory, not ${DROID_PLUGIN_ROOT}. The parent does the thinking; the worker executes:

Task prompt for a capture worker:
  "Run these commands in order. Report the output file path and any errors.
   1. /abs/path/to/bin/tctl launch "droid-dev" -s 1712345678-42-before --backend tuistory \
        --repo-root /abs/path/to/baseline/worktree \
        --cols 120 --rows 36 --record /tmp/droid-run-1712345678-42-xxxx/before.cast \
        --env FORCE_COLOR=3 --env COLORTERM=truecolor
   2. /abs/path/to/bin/tctl -s 1712345678-42-before wait ">" --timeout 15000
   3. /abs/path/to/bin/tctl -s 1712345678-42-before type "hello world"
   4. /abs/path/to/bin/tctl -s 1712345678-42-before press enter
   5. /abs/path/to/bin/tctl -s 1712345678-42-before wait-idle
   6. /abs/path/to/bin/tctl -s 1712345678-42-before close"

Task prompt for a Remotion render worker:
  "Run this command. Report the output file path and any errors.
   /abs/path/to/scripts/render-showcase.sh \
     --props /tmp/droid-run-1712345678-42-xxxx/showcase-props.json \
     --output /tmp/droid-run-1712345678-42-xxxx/demo.mp4 \
     /tmp/droid-run-1712345678-42-xxxx/before.cast /tmp/droid-run-1712345678-42-xxxx/after.cast"

Parallel capture pattern (comparison flows only)

Only applicable when the Layout default table above selects side-by-side. For a single layout, launch one capture worker and skip this section.

For before/after comparison demos, launch both capture workers simultaneously:

1. Parent constructs the interaction script (identical for both branches)
2. Launch worker A: capture the baseline/reference branch with `--repo-root` set to that worktree
3. Launch worker B: capture the candidate/change branch with `--repo-root` set to that worktree
4. Wait for both to complete (TaskOutput)
5. Collect .cast paths from results
6. Continue to compose

Shared tooling

Terminal drivers use the unified tctl wrapper. agent-browser and desktop-control have their own CLIs (agent-browser, cua-driver) and do not use tctl.

Drivers can be combined in one workflow — e.g., tctl for a CLI and agent-browser for a web UI it interacts with.

Prerequisites

Install commands

# tuistory driver + recording
npm install -g tuistory                              # virtual PTY driver
pip install asciinema                                # terminal recording (tctl wraps this)
cargo install --git https://github.com/asciinema/agg  # .cast -> .gif converter (compose needs this)

# true-input driver (Linux/Wayland)
sudo apt-get install -y cage wtype                   # required: headless compositor + keystroke injection
sudo apt-get install -y grim wf-recorder             # optional: screenshots + video recording

# agent-browser driver
agent-browser install                                # one-time: downloads bundled Chromium

# desktop-control driver (Windows hosts: irm .../scripts/install.ps1 | iex)
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/trycua/cua/main/libs/cua-driver/scripts/install.sh | bash
cua-driver skills install                            # upstream skill pack (deep tool reference)

# compose + showcase (video rendering)
sudo apt-get install -y ffmpeg                       # video processing (includes ffprobe)
cd ${DROID_PLUGIN_ROOT}/remotion && npm install       # Remotion dependencies
# Chrome or Chromium must be installed for Remotion rendering