I’ve been building Buddy, a free, open source (Apache 2.0) Android app. You type or say what you want in a floating bubble, and an AI agent reads the screen, taps and types through your apps to do it.
- Your choice of agent: Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Antigravity or Grok, running inside the app (Alpine Linux via proot) on your own plan. OpenCode’s free models need no account.
- No root, adb or PC: it reads the screen and taps through the accessibility service.
- Asks first: before anything is sent, posted, bought or deleted. It pauses when you touch the screen and never types passwords or payment details.
- Builds apps: with Linux tools on, it builds real APKs on the phone. This week I drew a maze on a paper towel, took a photo, and it made it a tilt game. The first build crashed on launch; it found the bug and fixed it.
To be upfront:
- What the agent reads on your screen goes to the AI service you pick.
- It’s early (2.2), tested most on a OnePlus 12 with Android 16.
- It’s not on Play (Google rejected the accessibility use), so it’s an APK from GitHub releases, built by GitHub Actions from the source.
Source and releases: github.com/ghorbelhamdi/buddy-android
Happy to answer questions here.
And rightly so. Stop making me side with Google.
Maybe if it were designed to run completely locally I could respect it.
It can now: since 2.2.25 it works with your own model server (Ollama, LM Studio or llama.cpp) on your network or over Tailscale, with no key, and nothing goes to an AI company. Honest caveat: small models (4–8B) handle simple requests but fumble multi-step tasks on the screen, so you’d want a bigger model for real use.