🔮 SphereLoom

Automating a 360° shoot today means a phone app, a desktop stitcher and a folder of files copied by hand. SphereLoom is built to let an AI agent drive an Insta360 camera directly, safely and honestly.

SphereLoom is an MCP server, designed so that any MCP client — an editor, a desktop assistant or your own agent — can check a camera, change its settings, capture, browse the gallery and bring media to your machine, through one set of typed tools. It is in early development: the capability matrix shows what works today.

What it is designed to do

• Speaks one tool surface for connecting, checking status, reading and changing settings, taking photos, recording video, browsing the gallery and downloading media.
• Is honest about every capability. A request the camera cannot serve gets a structured, explained answer — what is not possible, why, and where to read more — instead of a timeout or a stack trace.
• Runs long work in the background. Downloads are jobs you can follow and cancel, and responses carry file paths and metadata, never media bytes.
• Is safe by default. It runs locally over stdio with no network listener, writes only inside one workspace folder, and asks for an explicit confirmation before deleting anything.
• Keeps your media local. Nothing is uploaded anywhere, and no model credentials are needed: the server is deterministic, and the reasoning stays in your client.
• Works without a camera for development. A built-in fake camera runs the whole test suite and doubles as a demo backend.

How it is designed to work, in plain terms

1. You join your camera’s Wi-Fi access point from your computer.
2. Your MCP client starts SphereLoom as a local process.
3. The agent calls tools such as “check status” or “take a photo”; SphereLoom checks that the camera can do it, talks to the camera, and returns a typed result.
4. Downloads run as background jobs and land in your workspace folder.

SphereLoom targets Insta360 cameras, and development and testing target the Insta360 X5. The Wi-Fi layer follows the open Open Spherical Camera API, so other cameras may happen to work, but none is tested or supported.

Documentation

• Developer guide: architecture and diagrams, requirements, getting started, project layout, testing, configuration and the security model.
• Capabilities: what SphereLoom can do today, what is not available yet, and what the camera’s API does not offer.
• Contributing: how to propose changes and the workflow to follow.
• Security policy: how to report a vulnerability.
• Code of Conduct: the standards expected in this community.
• Changelog: what changed, and when.

For developers

Want to run SphereLoom, try it without a camera, or understand how it is built? Head to the developer guide. You do not need a camera to contribute.

Status

Early development. The MCP server runs over stdio and enforces its configuration and security guard rails, but it does not control a camera yet. The capability matrix shows the state of every capability, and the changelog announces each one as it ships.

Licensing and trademarks

SphereLoom is released under the MIT licence. It needs no agent framework and no model client, and GPL-licensed dependencies are not used.

SphereLoom does not redistribute any Insta360 SDK. Wi-Fi control uses only Insta360’s publicly documented HTTP API. Features that need a vendor SDK require you to apply for it yourself, accept its licence, and point SphereLoom at your local copy.

Insta360 is a trademark of Arashi Vision Inc. SphereLoom is an independent, unaffiliated project and is neither endorsed by, sponsored by, nor associated with Arashi Vision Inc. The name “Insta360” is used here only descriptively, to state which cameras this software works with.