Headless Flipper - embeddable mobile devtools for your CI and beyond

Goncharov describes Flipper as a debugging platform for mobile apps and other hardware, similar to Chrome DevTools for devices. It discovers devices through tools such as ADB and idb, then connects plugins to them through a message bus. Plugins can inspect layouts, network requests, logs, CPU use, and application state; they can also simulate hardware signals or send commands to an app.

The original Electron app combined device discovery, message handling, and the React interface. That made remote simulators, cloud development environments, and programmatic access harder to support. The new architecture separates a Node.js Flipper server from a browser-based UI, with the two communicating over WebSockets.

Goncharov explains that scripts should call plugin APIs directly rather than operate the UI. A Flipper Server Companion runs plugins on the server and exposes their APIs to headless clients through RPC-like WebSocket messages. In the tic-tac-toe example, a client can call functions such as `makeMove` and `reset`; the plugin serializes requests and responses, while an API function controls which calls are available in headless mode.

At Meta, one working use case lets a developer run a terminal command to capture a device screenshot and submit it to the cloud for design verification. The team is also exploring Flipper alongside end-to-end tests running on cloud simulators, so developers can inspect device data in a browser. Goncharov suggests that plugin data could support state assertions, snapshot testing, or saved debugging records, while noting these ideas are not yet implemented.