this 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
I'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.
It'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.
> 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.
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).
>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.
You could export BASH_ENV to have Bash processes source a given file at startup.
Zsh has .zshenv, and Fish just has config.fish for everything with the ability to guard certain things within it to login only or non-interactive only.
> 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.
Wow. 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.
you 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/codin...), and say you want an android app. It problem solves for a bit, then spits out an apk out to your Downloads folder.
Let 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.
Also 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
This 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.
Taking 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.
This 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.
Let'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.
You'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.
Good, 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.
"This APK cannot be scanned and its safety cannot be verified. Learn more/go back" and "learn more" has a link that looks like nothing but is actually a button to actually install the app.
I can think of some easier things, for example popping up a dialog, pressing "install" and having my all actually be installed after that.
Agents will allow human programmers to get what they've been begging for decades now: proper requirements and flexible, logical, tooling.
this 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
Any textbooks or resources on getting better at naming things?
The Programmers Brain book was my go to
"How to be Unix-y in Eleventy Billion Steps"
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-Tab...> and short options from -a to -z <http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch10s05.html>.
The Design of Everyday Things.
The conclusion I drew from that book is that I shouldn't be naming things.
I'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.
It'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.
> 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.
The tooling in 2026 is so easy you can do almost anything without AI very very quickly.
The install command shown for Windows is 404.
`curl -fsSL 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/inst... -o "%TEMP%\i.cmd" && "%TEMP%\i.cmd"`
I manually downloaded the exe, but it say socket error. vibe coding is going strong!
Goggles Android tooling has been like this forever, nothing to do with AI.
I 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).
>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
>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?
Android 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?
`alias android-cli='android-cli --no-metrics'`
Uh do aliases load in non-interactive shells?
Create a wrapping binary instead
You could export BASH_ENV to have Bash processes source a given file at startup.
Zsh has .zshenv, and Fish just has config.fish for everything with the ability to guard certain things within it to login only or non-interactive only.
> 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.
Wow. 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.
you 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/codin...), and say you want an android app. It problem solves for a bit, then spits out an apk out to your Downloads folder.
Let 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.
Also 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
You actually can right now on termux.
This 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.
Taking 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.
This 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.
Let'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.
> 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?
Damned if you do. Damned if you dont.
Damned if you don't, damned if you do fifteen years later for an entirely different reason.
How can I use this official android skill with Claude code?
Is there any step by step process or guidance on it?
Looks like the docs start here: 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
Catching up to Flutter.
flutter have this already?
AFAIK, Flutter has had a good, capable CLI since the beggining. You've never needed to install Android Studio to use Flutter.
I meant in terms of development speed with agents.
But can I publish an app without having to share my ID? I want an ecosystem that doesn't require it.
It's not just your ID; it's your address, phone number, and the list goes on.
Absolutely not. That would be crazy.
Zapstore or Obtanium...
Now please let us install the apps just as easily
downloading 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
You'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.
Good, 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.
It is 1 click because the malware is on the play store already!
"This APK cannot be scanned and its safety cannot be verified. Learn more/go back" and "learn more" has a link that looks like nothing but is actually a button to actually install the app.
I can think of some easier things, for example popping up a dialog, pressing "install" and having my all actually be installed after that.
Flutter CLI is what we really need but this is a welcome addition.
It exists already. Wdym?