argent-screen-recording

What the source does

• FilesystemNone observedNo reads or writes in the source
• NetworkNone observedNo outbound calls in the source
• ShellNone observedNo commands run in the source
• DependenciesPinnedNothing floats
• SecretsNone foundNo keys in source

Five audit layers

Gates applied: no behavioural pass.

Audit 0.4.1 · source sha 2ff9ec3016e5 · 28 Oct 2026Report an issue or request a re-scan

• Publishersoftware-mansion GitHub organizationOwner of the repository this skill is read from
• Source foldersoftware-mansion/argent/packages/skills/skills/argent-screen-recordingThe exact folder we audited
• LicenceApache-2.0As the repository states it
• Commit pinned for this verdict2ff9ec3016e5A new audit runs when the source changes
• Repository statusNot archivedPushed today
• Sandboxed runNot runSkills are read, not executed; layer L4 is skipped

Its description: Record a video of an iOS simulator or Android emulator/device screen using argent MCP tools. Use when the user asks to record the screen, capture a video of a flow, interaction, or animation, produce a screen recording,…

---
name: argent-screen-recording
description: Record a video of an iOS simulator or Android emulator/device screen using argent MCP tools. Use when the user asks to record the screen, capture a video of a flow, interaction, or animation, produce a screen recording, or document app behavior as a video clip.
---

## 1. Tools

- `screen-recording-start`: start capturing the screen of a booted device to a video file. Frames come from the same simulator-server backend that `screenshot` and the interaction tools already use, and are encoded live to h264 mp4 (constant 30 fps, device-native resolution).
- `screen-recording-stop`: stop the capture, finalize the container, and retrieve the video as a downloadable artifact (`video.hostPath` for co-located clients).

One recording per device at a time; different devices can record concurrently. Recording does not disturb anything else reading the device: a preview window can stay open on the same screen.

---

## 2. Critical: never leave a recording running

A recording does not stop itself before its `timeLimitSeconds` cap, so a forgotten one keeps capturing until the cap fires, holding the recording session, wasting disk, and delaying the video you are waiting on (and with `trimStatic: false` it comes back padded with dead air). Two safety nets exist; use both:

1. **Set yourself a reminder the moment the recording starts.** You know the expected capture length (the interaction you are about to drive). Immediately after `screen-recording-start` returns, schedule a wake-up for that expected end time using whatever your harness provides: a built-in reminder/wakeup or scheduled-task tool if you have one, otherwise a background shell running `sleep <expected-seconds>` whose completion notification pulls you back. When it fires, call `screen-recording-stop`. Do not rely on remembering.
2. **Read the tool-result notes.** While a recording is running, every argent tool result carries a `NOTE:` reminding you it is still going and how to stop it. If the note says the recording already ended (time limit hit), still call `screen-recording-stop`; that is what hands you the file.

---

## 3. Workflow

1. Ensure the target device is booted and the app is in the state you want the video to open on (`list-devices`, `launch-app`, `argent-device-interact`).
2. Call `screen-recording-start` with `udid` and a `timeLimitSeconds` slightly above the expected interaction length (default 180, max 600). Taps and swipes are drawn into the video by default (see the touch-visualizer note below); pass `showTouches: false` for a clean raw-screen capture.
3. Set the end-of-recording reminder described in §2; this step is not optional.
4. Drive the interaction to capture: gestures, navigation, typing (`argent-device-interact`). Prefer `run-sequence` for tight multi-step interactions so tool-call latency does not pad the video.
5. Call `screen-recording-stop` with the same `udid`. It returns `{ video, durationMs, wallClockMs?, trimmedMs?, warning? }`; `video` is an artifact whose resolved path points at the durably-saved file (see below). The video is already final when stop returns (the watermark is stamped during capture, not in a second pass), so stop takes well under a second.
6. Check `warning`: it reports cap-triggered stops, early encoder exits, a dropped frame stream, and possibly-truncated containers. Verify the file plays (or at least has a sane size) before presenting it to the user.

**Where the file lands (durable, not scratch).** Unlike most argent artifacts (which live in a disposable temp cache the OS reclaims), a finished recording is saved durably on the **client** into `<project>/.argent/recordings/`, the project being the nearest ancestor of the client's working directory with a `.git`/`package.json`/`.argent`, or `~/.argent/recordings/` when the client isn't inside a project. This holds even for a remote `argent link` tool-server: the mp4 is written on the client host, not the server. The destination can be changed with the `recordings.directory` configuration (`argent config set recordings.directory <dir>`, global by default, `--scope project` for a per-repo choice; project wins when both are set); the value may be absolute, `~`-prefixed, or relative to the project root, and is always resolved on the client host. The saved name is `screen-recording-<device>-<timestamp>.mp4`; if that name is already taken the new file lands beside it as `... (2).mp4` rather than overwriting. Because these files persist in the working tree, mention the path to the user (and note that they are untracked; add them to `.gitignore` or clean them up if they shouldn't be committed).

**Static-frame trimming (on by default).** Stretches where the screen does not change are collapsed: the first second of each still stretch is kept so pauses read naturally, then unchanged frames are dropped until something moves again (a change of even a couple of pixels counts). So you can leave a recording running across slow steps, waits, or thinking time without padding the clip with dead air: a 40-second session with 5 seconds of real activity comes back as a ~5-7 second video. When trimming removed anything, stop also returns `wallClockMs` (real elapsed time) and `trimmedMs` (how much was cut); `durationMs` is always the length of the video you actually get. Pass `trimStatic: false` to `screen-recording-start` when you want a faithful real-time recording (e.g. to measure how long something took on screen).

**Touch visualizer (on by default).** Every interaction argent drives is drawn straight into the video: a pulse marks each tap, a fading comet trail follows swipes and drags, and paired markers show the two contact points of a pinch or rotate. This makes a recording self-explanatory: a viewer can see _where_ each gesture landed rather than watching the UI react to an invisible finger. It is rendered by simulator-server into the frame stream (nothing is composited host-side), so it costs nothin

Excerpt, first 6,000 characters of SKILL.md, verbatim from the audited commit. It is text from someone else’s repository, quoted so you can judge it before your agent reads it.

git clone https://github.com/software-mansion/argent
git -C argent checkout 2ff9ec3016e5

Works in

1. 2026-10-28
   ✓SAFE B 89 / 100

   first audit · source 2ff9ec3016e5

Questions about argent-screen-recording

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