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How to give Claude Code an iOS simulator in 60 seconds

Maurice Carrier ·

If you already have Xcode and a working iOS simulator, you can wire SimDrive into Claude Code in about a minute. The same install works for Cursor and Continue — same MCP server, same JSON, same tools.

Install

Terminal window
pip install simdrive
simdrive trial start --email you@example.com

The trial unlocks every tool for 14 days. After that, simdrive auth <key> swaps you to a paid license.

Add the MCP server to Claude Code

Terminal window
mkdir -p ~/.claude

Edit ~/.claude/mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "simdrive": {
      "command": "simdrive",
      "args": ["mcp", "serve"]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Code. You should see 32 tools registered under MCP, prefixed ios_.

First prompt

Open any iOS project in Claude Code. Paste:

Boot the iPhone 17 simulator, launch my app, take a screenshot,
and tell me what you see on the first screen.

Claude will:

  1. Call ios_device_select with model: iPhone 17, runtime: latest
  2. Call ios_app_launch with the bundle id from your Info.plist
  3. Call ios_observe and describe the rendered UI

Total wall-clock time on a warm sim: 20-30 seconds.

Cursor

Cursor reads the same MCP server config. Edit ~/.cursor/mcp.json (or your project’s .cursor/mcp.json) with the same JSON block. Restart Cursor. Same 32 tools.

Continue

Continue’s MCP support lives in ~/.continue/config.json under experimental.modelContextProtocolServers:

{
  "experimental": {
    "modelContextProtocolServers": [
      {
        "transport": {
          "type": "stdio",
          "command": "simdrive",
          "args": ["mcp", "serve"]
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Smoke test

Before you try anything ambitious:

Terminal window
simdrive doctor

doctor checks for Xcode command-line tools, a runnable sim runtime, the SimDrive license state, and the MCP server’s ability to boot. If any of those are wrong, it tells you the exact command to fix them.

If doctor is green, the next thing to read is the bug-reproduction post — it walks the end-to-end flow from a real ticket to a saved replay. The full tool reference (all 32 tools, every argument, every return shape) lives in the simdrive-docs repo; the hosted docs site at docs.simdrive.dev is coming shortly.

Common first prompts

Tap through onboarding on the iPhone 17 sim and tell me where
the flow feels stuck.
Record a journey from launch to "create account" tapped. Save
it as onboarding-happy-path.
Replay onboarding-happy-path against the current dev build and
report any visual diffs.
Capture a perf trace of cold launch on iPhone 15 and compare it
to the baseline at perf/baselines/cold-launch.json.

Pricing is at simdrive.dev/pricing. The trial is 14 days, no card required.