Problem
When an agent connects to Pinky over HTTP from another machine, an image supplied to the agent may exist only on the agent's machine. phone_files pushes files from a folder on the computer running Pinky, so the remote agent cannot directly provide its local image to Pinky for transfer to the phone.
For example, Pinky runs on Windows while an agent runs on a separate Linux host. The user asks the agent to send an image from the agent's host in a phone chat app. phone_files identifies a Windows-local staging directory, which the agent cannot access directly.
Expected behavior
Provide a way for a remote HTTP MCP client to transfer an image to Pinky and, after the existing user approval for a push, onto the phone. On Android, the image should become visible in the device's photo picker so it can be selected in a messaging app.
Workaround
In this case, direct ADB access was available from the agent's machine: we pushed the image to the Android phone and invoked the media scanner before selecting it in the chat app. This requires separate ADB access and does not provide a general solution for remote HTTP MCP clients.
Environment
- Pinky host: Windows
- Remote MCP client: Linux, connected over HTTP
- Phone: Android (Pixel 3)
Activity
2
DIYgod10h agoUpdate: this shipped in Pinky 2026.1108.23. A remote agent can now hand a file to Pinky with phone_files { action: "upload" }: up to 10 MB, put the base64 right in content; for anything bigger, Pinky returns a one-time link (up to 200 MB, valid for 10 minutes) to upload to with curl --upload-file. Pushing it to the phone still waits for your approval, as before. For now this works for Android phones only.
Thanks for the detailed write-up and the ADB workaround. Agreed:
phone_filesonly sees folders on the machine running Pinky, so a remote HTTP client has no way to hand it a file today. We're looking at letting a remote agent send a file's contents to Pinky over MCP: Pinky would keep it in its folder on that machine, and pushing it to the phone would go through the same approval as any push. Once a file is on an Android phone, galleries and photo pickers already see it (Pinky asks the media scanner on Android 10; newer versions index it by themselves). No date yet; we'll update this issue when there's news.