@inproceedings{cai-etal-2026-palmclaw,
title = "{P}alm{C}law: A Native On-Device Agent Framework for Mobile Phones",
author = "Cai, Hongru and
Li, Yongqi and
Wei, Ran and
Li, Wenjie",
editor = "Agrawal, Sweta and
Abad, Alberto",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing: System Demonstrations",
month = oct,
year = "2026",
address = "Budapest, Hungary",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.emnlp-demos.79/",
pages = "840--849",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-461-3",
abstract = "Large Language Model (LLM) agents have moved beyond generating responses to executing multi-step tasks by calling tools, observing the results, and iteratively deciding the next action. Most agent systems run on desktops or servers, which support tool use and task automation. Mobile devices are also important agent environments because they are widely accessible and contain users' data, sensors, and daily-use applications. Existing mobile agents mainly operate smartphones through graphical user interface (GUI) actions such as tapping, swiping, and typing, which often form long, interface-dependent sequences, cannot directly access device capabilities, and make execution boundaries difficult to define. We present **PalmClaw**, an open-source agent framework that runs natively on mobile phones and manages the sessions, memory, skills, tools, and agent loop directly on the device. PalmClaw exposes device capabilities as device tools with explicit arguments, structured results, and clearly defined execution boundaries. This design enables agents to use mobile capabilities directly while keeping each action explicit and controlled. Experiments show an 11.5{\%} relative improvement in task success and a 94.9{\%} reduction in completion time over the strongest baseline, with lower setup burden and traces illustrating how execution boundaries are applied. Code is available at https://github.com/ModalityDance/PalmClaw."
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<abstract>Large Language Model (LLM) agents have moved beyond generating responses to executing multi-step tasks by calling tools, observing the results, and iteratively deciding the next action. Most agent systems run on desktops or servers, which support tool use and task automation. Mobile devices are also important agent environments because they are widely accessible and contain users’ data, sensors, and daily-use applications. Existing mobile agents mainly operate smartphones through graphical user interface (GUI) actions such as tapping, swiping, and typing, which often form long, interface-dependent sequences, cannot directly access device capabilities, and make execution boundaries difficult to define. We present **PalmClaw**, an open-source agent framework that runs natively on mobile phones and manages the sessions, memory, skills, tools, and agent loop directly on the device. PalmClaw exposes device capabilities as device tools with explicit arguments, structured results, and clearly defined execution boundaries. This design enables agents to use mobile capabilities directly while keeping each action explicit and controlled. Experiments show an 11.5% relative improvement in task success and a 94.9% reduction in completion time over the strongest baseline, with lower setup burden and traces illustrating how execution boundaries are applied. Code is available at https://github.com/ModalityDance/PalmClaw.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T PalmClaw: A Native On-Device Agent Framework for Mobile Phones
%A Cai, Hongru
%A Li, Yongqi
%A Wei, Ran
%A Li, Wenjie
%Y Agrawal, Sweta
%Y Abad, Alberto
%S Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing: System Demonstrations
%D 2026
%8 October
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Budapest, Hungary
%@ 979-8-89176-461-3
%F cai-etal-2026-palmclaw
%X Large Language Model (LLM) agents have moved beyond generating responses to executing multi-step tasks by calling tools, observing the results, and iteratively deciding the next action. Most agent systems run on desktops or servers, which support tool use and task automation. Mobile devices are also important agent environments because they are widely accessible and contain users’ data, sensors, and daily-use applications. Existing mobile agents mainly operate smartphones through graphical user interface (GUI) actions such as tapping, swiping, and typing, which often form long, interface-dependent sequences, cannot directly access device capabilities, and make execution boundaries difficult to define. We present **PalmClaw**, an open-source agent framework that runs natively on mobile phones and manages the sessions, memory, skills, tools, and agent loop directly on the device. PalmClaw exposes device capabilities as device tools with explicit arguments, structured results, and clearly defined execution boundaries. This design enables agents to use mobile capabilities directly while keeping each action explicit and controlled. Experiments show an 11.5% relative improvement in task success and a 94.9% reduction in completion time over the strongest baseline, with lower setup burden and traces illustrating how execution boundaries are applied. Code is available at https://github.com/ModalityDance/PalmClaw.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.emnlp-demos.79/
%P 840-849
Markdown (Informal)
[PalmClaw: A Native On-Device Agent Framework for Mobile Phones](https://aclanthology.org/2026.emnlp-demos.79/) (Cai et al., EMNLP 2026)
ACL