Roost

A tiny, dependency-free Android launcher that turns a spare phone into a dedicated device for an AI agent. It boots straight into your agent app (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, a local model — whatever you pick) but keeps a short list of utility apps (a VPN client, mail, a password manager) one tap away — because a hard single-app kiosk can't hop to WireGuard when you need to bring a tunnel up.

Roost is pure Android framework Kotlin — no AndroidX, no Compose, no Material, no raster assets, no bundled fonts. Deliberately hackable. It's vendor-neutral: the featured tile renders the installed agent app's own icon at runtime, so Roost's identity (a little robot that lives on the phone) stands on its own.

Two modes (toggle in Settings)

Mode	Home button shows	Boot
Curated	The robot mascot, a greeting, and one aligned grid — the featured agent (accent ring), your utility apps, and web apps	Auto-launches the agent once
Appliance	An ambient "at rest" face (mascot + greeting); long-press anywhere reveals the grid	Auto-launches the agent once

Tapping the mascot (or the ringed agent tile) opens your agent. Other settings: an agent name (the greeting becomes " is home" and drives the live status line), auto-launch on boot, keep screen on while docked, a themeable accent (Honey / Slate / Sage / Violet), a favorites picker, the featured agent app, web apps (add a URL that opens fullscreen in a WebView — self-host a Homarr or Homepage dashboard as an app tile), and a "Match wallpaper to Roost" action that paints Recents/transitions in the same warm-dark palette.

How it works

• Roost registers as the HOME activity, so pressing Home returns here.
• BootReceiver catches BOOT_COMPLETED and arms a one-shot flag; MainActivity.onResume consumes it and foregrounds the agent app. (The actual startActivity runs from the foreground HOME activity, sidestepping Android's background-activity-launch limits.)
• Favorites and settings live in SharedPreferences (Prefs.kt) — no database, no network, no analytics.
• The mascot is a Canvas view (MascotView.kt); the palette + drawable helpers live in Roost.kt.

Build

Requires JDK 17 and the Android SDK (platform 34, build-tools 34.0.0).

export JAVA_HOME="$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v 17 2>/dev/null || echo /opt/homebrew/opt/openjdk@17/libexec/openjdk.jdk/Contents/Home)"
export ANDROID_HOME="$HOME/Library/Android/sdk"
./gradlew assembleDebug
# → app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk

Install & set as default launcher

1. Enable Developer options → USB debugging (or Wireless debugging) and confirm adb devices lists it.
2. Install: adb install -r app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk
3. Press Home once and pick Roost as the default launcher (or: adb shell cmd package set-home-activity rocks.stump.roost/.MainActivity).
4. In Roost → Apps & settings → Featured agent app, set your agent app's package if it isn't the default (adb shell pm list packages lists what's installed).

Optional: keep the screen awake while charging (device-wide): adb shell settings put global stay_on_while_plugged_in 3

Provisioning the device (one-time, done on the phone)

1. Sign the device into its Google account and install your agent app + your utility apps.
2. Sign into the dedicated agent account, VPN, and any mail/password accounts.
3. Open Roost → Apps & settings and tick the apps you want on the grid.

Roadmap

• One-tap VPN tunnel toggle tile.
• An "awake" mascot state (bigger eye-glow) driven by the agent actually working.
• Favorite reordering; per-favorite custom labels.

License

MIT. Not affiliated with any AI vendor.