README says Claude Code but I don't know where to start

[GuaRuan]

the readme says "point Claude Code at this repo" and shows a bootstrap badge. what does that mean practically? do I open Claude Code and paste a command? do I need to run the server first? I use Claude Code but just in the terminal asking questions, never did the "point it at a repo" thing. a concrete step-by-step would help.

[HarveySang]

Good point. “Point Claude Code at this repo” is too vague as onboarding copy.

What we mean is not that Claude Code directly connects to the phone by itself. The intended flow is:

1. Clone OpenGUI locally.
2. Open Claude Code from the OpenGUI repo root.
3. Ask Claude Code to read the bootstrap skill:

Read ./skills/open-gui-bootstrap/SKILL.md and help me run OpenGUI. Only ask me for phone-side actions.

From there, Claude Code should guide the local setup. Under the hood, it still needs to start the OpenGUI backend, build/install the Android client, run the required adb setup, and check whether the phone is visible to OpenGUI.

So if you use the bootstrap flow, you do not need to manually start the server first. Claude Code can help with that part. The parts it cannot do for you are the phone-side actions, such as:

• connecting the Android device or starting an emulator
• approving USB debugging
• enabling AccessibilityService
• granting overlay / screen-related permissions
• providing model API credentials when needed

After setup, the basic smoke test is:

cd server
pnpm opengui -- devices --json
pnpm opengui -- do "Observe the current Android screen and summarize what you see" --json

If devices --json returns a device and the observe task works, Claude Code can then use the OpenGUI CLI / local API to dispatch phone tasks.

We should add this exact step-by-step explanation to the README, because the current wording assumes too much prior Claude Code workflow knowledge. Leaving this open as a docs issue.