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The computer suite has three members. The sandbox is a Linux micro-VM with a shell and a filesystem; the browser is a managed remote browser opened beside it; a mobile device is a cloud phone: a screen, touch input and an app lifecycle. It is its own resource: it needs no sandbox, and nothing about it is a shell.

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An Android phone

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What you get

  • A cloud phone, usually ready in about a minute, placed in the us, eu or as jurisdiction you ask for. POST waits up to about 45 seconds and answers with whatever is true then, usually creating; poll GET until it is ready.
  • Seven actions: screenshot, element_tree, tap (by coordinates or by an element’s text, id or accessibility label), type, press_key, scroll, open_url.
  • A realtime view of the screen in the dashboard, beside the controls, started on demand.
  • Apps installed when it starts, named by package (com.example.app) from the platform’s curated app catalogue.

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How it ends — timers, not pause

There is no pause. A device lives until you delete it or one of two timers fires, both set at create: The platform checks every running device once a minute, so a device ends within a minute of its timer. GET /v1/mobile_devices/{id} also reconciles: it asks the provider and rewrites the stored status when they disagree, filling terminated_at and termination_reason (requested, idle_timeout, max_duration, or unknown when the provider ended it). A fifth reason, unfunded, is the platform stopping a device whose organization can no longer pay for it; see Limits and billing. The list reads stored rows and can lag until a device is opened.

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Drive it

A screenshot is a JPEG at half the phone’s resolution (540 × 1200 on a typical phone), and its pixels map 1:1 to tap coordinates, which is what the dashboard’s click-to-tap uses. element_tree lists the named elements on the screen with their bounds in the same pixels, so a tap can name an element instead of a point. An action answers with words; take a screenshot to see its result.

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Agents

An agent uses a phone through the built-in mobile tool, on the pi harness only; the other harnesses have no mobile tool. The first call opens a phone for the session, the model sees each screenshot, and the phone shows up in the chat’s Computer panel and on the Mobile page (Computers → Mobile) while the agent works, so you can watch it live. The tool asks for approval by default; approve it for the session once and the agent carries on.
  • An agent’s phone takes the tool’s config: the same timers, but max_duration_minutes defaults to 60, not 120.
  • open_url is not bound by the browser’s allowed_domains: a phone opens any URL or deep link. For an agent whose web reach you narrowed, keep the tool on ask or set it to deny.

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Live view

The device page’s screen panel has two modes. Screenshot is a picture you click to tap. Live swaps the picture for a realtime stream of the screen, in the same place and at the same size, so the controls beside it stay where they are; Screenshot switches back and drops the stream. The credential behind the stream is a bearer credential — anyone holding it sees and drives the device — so it is held on that screen only, never stored, never logged, never returned inside another object, and withheld from the agent-facing tool catalogue. Each mint is written to the audit log as mobile_device.live_view_opened, without the credential. In Screenshot mode the page takes a new screenshot after each action, and again when you switch back from Live (the stream can drive the phone too). Taps in Live go straight to the phone, so while it plays the page also takes a screenshot every 30 seconds: that keeps the idle timer from ending a phone you are using. Live is offered once the device is ready; asked for while it is still starting, it answers 409 computer_unavailable.

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Limits and billing

  • One person or script should drive a device at a time; actions on one device run one after another.
  • Apps: up to 10 package names at create, from the platform’s curated app catalogue (there is no upload route); no install on a running device.
  • Capacity: no per-organization limit on live devices. A create is refused with 429 rate_limited only when every phone slot on the platform is in use; try again shortly.
  • Cost: $0.039 per device-minute ($2.34 per hour), from create to end, rounded up to whole minutes with a one-minute minimum. It is one mobile line on the ledger, booked once when the device ends. Actions are free beyond the minutes they run in, and a device that fails to provision bills nothing; one that ran and then hit an error is ended and billed for the minutes it ran. The device page shows the rate and the cost so far. See Pricing.
  • Money: a create is admitted when the balance covers 10 minutes ($0.39) for every live device and the new one (an agent’s phone included), plus what the live ones have run so far; otherwise it is 402 insufficient_credits, naming the amount needed. Once a minute the platform checks every running device. If the organization’s plan has lapsed, or its balance no longer covers what its running devices have accrued, it ends them with termination_reason: "unfunded" and bills the minutes they ran. A plan that is past_due keeps its devices through the payment grace period.
  • Phone minutes bill the organization’s balance directly, including a phone an agent opens. They are not held against a session’s or an agent’s budget cap; the timers and the funded-balance check above are what bound them.

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Reference