--- title: Android’s Agent-First Era: Build-Time vs Runtime | daily.dev description: Google has released two distinct sets of AI agent tooling for Android developers that are easy to confuse. Build-time agents (Android Skills + Android CLI)... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/android-s-agent-first-era-build-time-vs-runtime-nlusvhcc5 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Android’s Agent-First Era: Build-Time vs Runtime | daily.dev og:description: Google has released two distinct sets of AI agent tooling for Android developers that are easy to confuse. Build-time agents (Android Skills + Android CLI)... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/android-s-agent-first-era-build-time-vs-runtime-nlusvhcc5 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/NLusvHcC5.png og:image:alt: Android’s Agent-First Era: Build-Time vs Runtime og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Android’s Agent-First Era: Build-Time vs Runtime **[ProAndroidDev](https://daily.dev/sources/pand)** · 8 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Google has released two distinct sets of AI agent tooling for Android developers that are easy to confuse. Build-time agents (Android Skills + Android CLI) help developers write and modernize code faster by encoding best practices into reusable instruction files. Runtime agents (ADK for Kotlin) let developers ship AI-powered features inside their apps, including fully on-device inference via Gemini Nano through ML Kit. Skills are small SKILL.md files that ground coding agents in current Android patterns — useful for migrations like XML-to-Compose, Navigation 3 adoption, or AGP upgrades. The Android CLI wraps SDK setup, emulator management, scaffolding, and IDE integration into a single command. On the runtime side, ADK uses annotated Kotlin functions as tools and LlmAgent as the core abstraction, with a simple model swap enabling offline on-device execution. JetBrains' Koog is a competing runtime framework that is model-agnostic, supports Kotlin Multiplatform, and has reached a stable 1.0 release, giving it a maturity edge over ADK's early-stage Android artifact. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Announcing ADK for Kotlin and ADK for Android 0.1.0: Building AI Agents on Android and Beyond](https://daily.dev/posts/announcing-adk-for-kotlin-and-adk-for-android-0-1-0-building-ai-agents-on-android-and-beyond-jael4fscs) · Google Developers · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [With Android CLI, Google is Making the Android Toolchain Agent-Friendly](https://daily.dev/posts/with-android-cli-google-is-making-the-android-toolchain-agent-friendly-n84xdlayj) · InfoQ · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Google’s ADK Finally Treats Android Like a First-Class Citizen](https://daily.dev/posts/google-s-adk-finally-treats-android-like-a-first-class-citizen-hqetgpfds) · Medium · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#android](https://daily.dev/tags/android), [#ai-agents](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-agents), [#kotlin](https://daily.dev/tags/kotlin) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/android-s-agent-first-era-build-time-vs-runtime-nlusvhcc5) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Android’s Agent-First Era: Build-Time vs Runtime","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/android-s-agent-first-era-build-time-vs-runtime-nlusvhcc5","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/android-s-agent-first-era-build-time-vs-runtime-nlusvhcc5"},"datePublished":"2026-06-08T01:01:24.297Z","dateModified":"2026-06-18T21:22:29.180Z","description":"Google has released two distinct sets of AI agent tooling for Android developers that are easy to confuse. 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