8 ms·
Android CLI: Build Android apps 3x faster using any agent
- user2722 6mo agoAgents will allow human programmers to get what they've been begging for decades now: proper requirements and flexible, logical, tooling.
- bayarearefugee 6mo ago> Agents will allow human programmers to get what they've been begging for decades now: proper requirements and flexible, logical, tooling. ...and once this goal is finally reached the programmer will breathe a sigh of relief and then promptly be fired since now the machine can do the job as well as they could.
- risyachka 6mo agoThe tooling in 2026 is so easy you can do almost anything without AI very very quickly.
- oblio 6mo agoWhat tooling?
- risyachka 6mo agoFrontend, backend, workflow engines, payments, idk all of it. Like you can make a cross-platform react native app with expo in a day without any AI (a proper app, not a boilerplate). Same with many web apps. Shadcn with themes and components, tailwind, temporal workflows, etc etc. The complexity of making apps was solved years ago.
- oblio 6mo agoWe must live in different worlds. Even for professionals building high quality apps is hard. It's easier with AI, but it's still quite hard. And it was definitely harder without AI.
- rtpg 6mo agothis has been my sort of big tent alignment with AI people. If I'm getting good CLI tooling that _actually works_ (or fixes to existing ones that have been busted forever) then I'm pretty happy. Things that make systems more understandable to the LLMs ... usually make things more understandable for humans as well. Usually. The biggest issue I've found is that vibed up tooling tends to be pretty bad at having the right kind of "sense" for what makes good CLI UX. So you still have awkward argument structures or naming. Better than nothing though
- volume_tech 6mo ago[dead]
- whattheheckheck 6mo agoAny textbooks or resources on getting better at naming things? The Programmers Brain book was my go to
- stavros 6mo agoThe Design of Everyday Things.
- kube-system 6mo agoThe conclusion I drew from that book is that I shouldn't be naming things.
- ramses0 6mo ago"How to be Unix-y in Eleventy Billion Steps" http://www.robertames.com/blog.cgi/entries/the-unix-way-command-line-arguments-options.html http://www.robertames.com/blog.cgi/entries/the-unix-way-comm... TLDR: standard list of long options <https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Option-Table https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Option-Tab...> and short options from -a to -z <http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch10s05.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch10s05.html>.
- 6mo ago
- jadbox 6mo agoI've been thinking the same thing lately. It's sorta frustrating that it required bots to force tech companies to make clean simple cli driven development workflows.
- qingcharles 6mo agoIt's wild that it took AI to get half the companies on the planet to actually add reasonably priced APIs to their products so I don't have to puppeteer every damn thing with a flakey harness.
- fragmede 6mo agoAt the expense of no longer needing the human programmer...
- canarias_mate 6mo ago[flagged]
- Evidlo 6mo agoNow please let us install the apps just as easily
- stronglikedan 6mo agodownloading an APK and opening it is already about as easy as it gets. the only thing easier would be for someone else to do it for you
- throwaway81523 6mo agoYou're forgetting the installation ("sideloading", what everyone else calls installation) restrictions they are about to deploy. It will be a significant hassle to install anything without Google's approval. Many F-droid apps are showing warning notices about this upcoming change.
- kube-system 6mo agoGood, it shouldn't be two clicks for elderly people to install trojans on their phone that then drain their bank account. There should be some explicit confirmation that the user knows what they are doing and they are not being scammed. It is long overdue.
- LtWorf 6mo agoIt is 1 click because the malware is on the play store already!
- kube-system 6mo agoBoth are problematic.
- darkwater 6mo agoThink of the elders!
- sunaookami 6mo ago>Google collects usage data for the Android CLI, such as commands, sub-commands, and flags used. This data does not include custom parameters or identifiable information. This information helps improve the tool and is collected in accordance with Google's Privacy Policy. >https://policies.google.com/privacy https://policies.google.com/privacy >Disable Android CLI metrics collection by using the --no-metrics flag. No thanks, is there no env variable for this? Doesn't Google have enough data already?
- gowld 6mo agoAndroid CLI can write a tool that wraps android-cli and automatically passes the flag based on an env variable. How would Google have enough data about a brand new product without collecting that data?
- tredre3 6mo ago> How would Google have enough data about a brand new product without collecting that data? They wouldn't. But on the other hand, they probably have a large amount of in-house Android app developers on whom they can conduct such metrics collection. I wouldn't expect outsiders to have vastly different workflows, because when you get out of the happy path with Android all you get is pain.
- Onavo 6mo agoOutsiders probably do have vastly different workflows. Google internally love to stick Bazel on everything and that's quite different (and overly complicated) compared to the usual Gradle route.
- panzi 6mo ago`alias android-cli='android-cli --no-metrics'`
- SJMG 6mo agoUh do aliases load in non-interactive shells?
- kdhaskjdhadjk 6mo ago[flagged]
- rafram 6mo agoWhat does this have to do with the Android CLI?
- kdhaskjdhadjk 6mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- AnimalMuppet 6mo agoSince rafram is not the only one confused, yes, you really do.
- rvz 6mo agoIt isn't that hard to understand: > Just wait until there are entire classes of vulnerabilities related to LLM usage This is a valid concern. There are going to be a new class of vulnerabilities which an LLM is involved which are going to be discovered and it will make it possible to cause catastrophic damage to a company; very easily. This won't be surprising since we have companies building casual remote code execution tools for "agents" waiting to be hijacked.
- AnimalMuppet 6mo agoI understand that. What about that relates specifically to the Android CLI? That was rafram's question, and mine, and as far as I can tell still hasn't been answered. I mean, I guess if you're going to say "don't use LLMs", then you also don't want to let agents use the Android CLI, but it seems like raising an awfully general concern in a discussion about a very specific article.
- OutOfHere 6mo agoBut can I publish an app without having to share my ID? I want an ecosystem that doesn't require it.
- iririririr 6mo ago> Your agents perform best when they have a lightweight, programmatic interface to interact with the Android SDK and development environment. F you google. Me too. Why didn't we get a sane way to build android apps before you had to please chatbots?
- antirez 6mo agoLet's see if even mid/big companies with tons of resources, with AI and the right tooling will continue to write webview-apps or, even worse, use some kind of multi target wrapper.
- whstl 6mo agoI wish the same thing existed for Apple. Everything I do for macOS/iOS is already without Xcode but it's a pain in the ass to keep up with changes, and there are things I haven't figured out yet (like AUv3).
- srslyTrying2hlp 6mo ago[dead]
- netdevphoenix 6mo ago> Everything I do for macOS/iOS is already without Xcode Doesn't Xcode allow you to plug in agents like VS Code does?
- whstl 6mo agoI don't know, I don't use/want to use Xcode. What I'm interested is in the CLI tool for my own use, not necessarily for agents.
- generalpf 6mo agoCome on now, you're going to need Xcode at some point during development.
- groby_b 6mo agoNo, you really don't. Apple would like you to use it (god knows why), but it's not necessary.
- brailsafe 6mo agoI feel like this needs a big asterisk. Can you ship a a non-trivial iOS or Mac app that uses SwiftUI or other first-party APIs without Xcode? Is it practical? Those are real questions, some cursory searching did not turn up a concrete answer.
- agentifysh 6mo agoFlutter CLI is what we really need but this is a welcome addition.
- bartekpacia 6mo agoIt exists already. Wdym?
- wiseowise 6mo agoFlutter quality like tooling, I assume.
- mridulmalpani 6mo agoHow can I use this official android skill with Claude code? Is there any step by step process or guidance on it?
- cbhl 6mo agoLooks like the docs start here: https://developer.android.com/tools/agents/android-skills#use_android_skills https://developer.android.com/tools/agents/android-skills#us... There's a link to a repo or you can use the CLI tool to init the skills
- kevinten10 6mo ago[flagged]
- winrid 6mo agoCatching up to Flutter.
- firemelt 6mo agoflutter have this already?
- winrid 6mo agoI meant in terms of development speed with agents.
- diego_sandoval 6mo agoAFAIK, Flutter has had a good, capable CLI since the beggining. You've never needed to install Android Studio to use Flutter.
- wiseowise 6mo agoNot even close. Flutter has been engineered from the ground up with excellent tooling, unlike Android’s mess of organically evolved crap held together by a duct tape.
- aquariusDue 6mo agoYeah, I've been using Flutter since December last year and I'm really amazed how good the developer experience is. I kinda regret not picking it up sooner but from what I understand now's a great time too with the roadmap they've planned for this year (videos on YouTube explaining Flutter concepts and decoupling Material and Cupertino). You can even make 2D games with Flutter with the help of Flame[0] but be wary that pixel art style games are a bit of a hassle due to some bugs in Flutter itself. Otherwise Flutter is a joy to use for its intended purpose: cross-platform apps. [0] https://flame-engine.org/ https://flame-engine.org/
- winrid 6mo agoI didn't say caught up did I? :)
- hemc4 6mo agoWow. Thanks for this update. It streamlined a lot of tasks. Apart from this, next step will be to add suport for building android apps on the android phones itself. No desktop needed.Building on the laptop with agents and installing the build in the phone and testing doea not seem AI native. If everything can run on my android phone, development cycle will speed up.
- xstas1 6mo agoyou already could! just install Termux, npm install your favourite agent harness (pi for one has explicit Termux support, but its AGENTS.md works just fine with Claude Code for example - https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/blob/main/packages/coding-agent/docs/termux.md https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/blob/main/packages/codin...), and say you want an android app. It problem solves for a bit, then spits out an apk out to your Downloads folder.
- hemc4 6mo agoLet me try this. Last year this was a dream. Can't belive we are so close to automate all of this. My major issue last time was providing the feedback to the agent by running the apk on phone i.e, pass the debug log from the apk back to agent so it can iterate on it without me providing any input.
- fragmede 6mo agoask the agent to run adb log so it can read it for itself
- smalltorch 6mo agoYou actually can right now on termux.
- xstas1 6mo agoAlso coding agents will happily compile android applications (of maximum complexity) via Github Actions where you can just pick them up with Obtainium. No PC needed
- jadar 6mo agoThis is great. We also need a tool to expose source jars to agents so they don’t need to compress. There’s a lot of Compose overloads that Claude just guesses at. I built something internally but it needs polish and Claude really struggled with the deep Gradle integration.
- hyhmrright 6mo ago[dead]
- anabis 6mo agoThe install command shown for Windows is 404. `curl -fsSL https://dl.google.com/android/cli/latest/windows_x86_64/install.sh https://dl.google.com/android/cli/latest/windows_x86_64/inst... | bash` The URL shown for individual OSs work, but the script errors for me. `curl.exe -fsSL https://dl.google.com/android/cli/latest/windows_x86_64/install.cmd https://dl.google.com/android/cli/latest/windows_x86_64/inst... -o "%TEMP%\i.cmd" && "%TEMP%\i.cmd"` I manually downloaded the exe, but it say socket error. vibe coding is going strong!
- anabis 6mo agoI got a workaround a la GH Copilot: <pre> > android skills list Picked up JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS: -Djava.net.useSystemProxies=true </pre>
- throwa356262 6mo agoGoggles Android tooling has been like this forever, nothing to do with AI.
- embedding-shape 6mo agoAh, ok, no worries then, here I thought they didn't care about engineering quality or tooling that works just recently, but turns out they never did! Thanks :)
- pjmlp 6mo agoBack when I cared about Android development, Google was famous for releasing stable builds of Android Studio/Android Gradle Plugin, that always broke on day 1, regardless of how many preview and candidate builds predated it. The company with hiring processes for the creme de la creme among developers.
- csomar 6mo agoI honestly have no idea what is going on. Lots of broken things in what's supposed to be front products for Google and other "high name" brands. I don't get it: Where is everybody? Is there no one there? Are these companies really dead inside?
- rvillberg 6mo agoThis is a good step forward, but keep in mind the claimed gains are about "project and environment setup", not the tasks you deal with on a daily basis in an existing project.
- anabis 6mo agoTaking screenshots, optionally with component borders highlighted, and operating the UI with element names like "button1" instead of tap 200,30 looks useful. If I could get it to work.
- noahz-google 6mo agohey! I'm the dude workin' on that + the `layout` command to try to make device interaction via CLI less painful. please do throw your gripes and complaints/suggestions at me; I'd like to make it work well/intuitively for folks.
- anabis 6mo agoThx. In other comment, but setting Java options for proxy settings worked. I was guessing annotations would be based on UI framework borders(which I can toggle on screen via debug menu), but looks it's based on image recognition locally. Maybe you can have UI component borders as option(haven't heavily used it yet, so throwing around ideas)
- DeathArrow 6mo agoCan we have a web development CLI with web development skills?
- wiseowise 6mo agoAndroid Studio on its deathbed. Just release VSCode plugin and kill it for good, it has been a buggy, slow mess for the last 3 years or so.
- barrkel 6mo ago[flagged]
- netdevphoenix 6mo agoIf you think Android Studio has been a bug in the last 3 years, you haven't used it back in the days of Android Studio Beta. It has come a long way.
- belimawr 6mo agoMust be a web dev who adamantly uses VSCode for everything
- Steltek 6mo agoI can't be the only one with a severe aversion to language/platform specific IDEs. "Oh no, you can't write Python in Vim, you need to get Pycharm!" "iOS apps? Don't try anything except XCode." IDEs are (were? :-/) a very personal choice. Maybe I'm an AI but I would have loved a CLI-centric workflow. It would have kept options open.
- hbn 6mo ago
- miroljub 6mo agoI must say I'm quite disappointed. I expected something useful for application development. All it offers is some wrapper around the basic Android setup command that LLMs are already good at. What, initial empty project creation now takes 5 minutes instead of 10? Big deal, who cares? I had another hope awakening that at least skills might be useful. But except for a few migration recipes, there's nothing of value for day to day Android development. Facit: I'll skip installing another Google app whose only purpose is more spying on me and keep developing Android apps the way I already do. TLDR: Nothing to see here. Move on.
- Natfan 6mo agogreat! now let me know when your official app store transparently alerts users when an app they were using was sold to a third-party adtech surveillance company, please :)
- hansmayer 6mo ago> 3x faster Because the real bottleneck is really the velocity of development, right next to keeping the codebase small - right guys?
- overfeed 6mo agoCode-generation velocity, and the absolute number of lines churned are 2 metrics AI tools can irrefutably benchmaxx, so the vendors highlight them.
- hansmayer 6mo agoOh absolutely - the old saying about only having a hammer and seeing each problem as a nail applies. On the positive side, they've decided to come down from "superintelligence", "superchanging workflows" and other bullshit to the actual feature - 3x speed of text generation. Which is not quite the problem that needed to be solved in software engineering, but as you said yourself...
- Ciantic 6mo ago`android docs` is the superpower we need for everything. NPM / pnpm should have similar `npm docs` that would allow humans and agents to search for type-signatures and JSDocs. It is so annoying that each agent has its own ideas where it tries to get the docs, usually by blindly grepping.
- 1313ed01 6mo agoCLI in a product name now means LLM agent TUI specifically and not just, as I would have expected, any kind of Command Line Interface? And usually there is barely a CLI included at all and you are expected to mostly launch the full TUI with its own embedded readline-loop rather that use the CLI?
- jezzamon 6mo agoThis is a CLI, the example shows the Gemini TUI using it
- sailingcode 6mo agoEfficiency claim: 70% less token usage, 3x faster task completion in internal testing. Even if that's marketing-inflated, the structured CLI commands replace a lot of trial-and-error. Gonna try it.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- digitalShield 6mo ago[flagged]
- mixedCase 6mo agoIs there Live Edit support? I've literally left an agent running to automate the use of Android Studio out of my workflow when I just want to iterate on UI.