Blog
Notes from building and running an orchard of Macs and simulators.
August 11, 2026
v0.5.0: one call from clean simulator to evidence
POST /v0/runs takes a declarative YAML run-spec and executes the whole agent loop — lease, boot, install, launch, steps, artifacts, release — with the lease always released and a PR-ready evidence export attached, even on failure.
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August 11, 2026
Testing iOS apps without a Mac fleet: mock mode
manzanasd --mock runs the daemon on any Linux box with a full deterministic action backend — the real observe/tap/audit handlers against a synthetic app screen. A tutorial from raw HTTP to a one-call run with evidence.
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August 11, 2026
Why agents need simulator leases
Two agents on one Mac will boot each other's simulators and type into the wrong window. Why locks fail, why leases (TTL + FIFO queues) work, and how ~0.28 s warm-pool thaws make short leases actually viable.
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August 3, 2026
Field notes: real devices, a smarter broker, video
Wave 3 in one day — 79 files, +6,808 lines: physical iPhones as leasable targets (devicectl + WebDriverAgent), warm-first broker placement on daemon-truth load, an embedded /dash dashboard, per-lease video capture, and a Go 1.22 toolchain quietly shipping binaries that crash on macOS 26.
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August 2, 2026
Field notes: optimizing the fleet
Seven measured findings in one post: apsd taking idle sims from 213% to 1–6% CPU, 26ms thaws vs multi-second boots, golden images that silently lost their slimming, boot storms, 26x smaller screenshots, and a workstation that never throttles.
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August 1, 2026
Adding a trashcan to the orchard
A 2013 Mac Pro 6,1 joins the fleet as a headless always-on CI runner: dying GPUs, non-throttling cores, and the OCLP path to modern Xcode.
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July 29, 2026
Growing an orchard out of two $250 shitboxes
Two retired 2017 MacBook Pros, OpenCore Legacy Patcher, Tailscale, and the measurements from turning them into a simulator farm for AI agents.
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