AndroidBoss

Tested tools for Android and Kotlin Multiplatform developers and their coding agents

Website · MCP setup · npm · Report a bug

AndroidBoss turns the fiddly parts of Android and Kotlin® Multiplatform work into small, deterministic tools: deobfuscating an R8 stack trace, checking that Kotlin, AGP and Gradle versions work together, finding what changes when you raise targetSdk, writing actual declarations for each KMP target, and more.

The same tools are available three ways:

Every tool's output is checked against the real toolchain before it ships: R8 and Google's retrace, Gradle, aapt2, Kotlin/Native, swiftc and the Android CLI.

Contents

• Quick start

• Tools

• Connect your agent

• Command-line usage

• Privacy and limits

• How it's built

• Development

• Contributing

• Support the project

• Licence

Related MCP server: claude-android

Quick start

Give your coding agent the tools (Claude Code shown; other agents below):

claude mcp add --transport http androidboss https://mcp.androidboss.org/mcp

Then ask it something like "Retrace this crash with app/build/outputs/mapping/release/mapping.txt" or "Can I move to AGP 9.5 with my current Gradle version?"

Or run the tools yourself (Node.js 22 or newer):

npx androidboss tools
npx androidboss retrace --mapping @app/build/outputs/mapping/release/mapping.txt < crash.txt
npx androidboss check-compatibility --kotlin 2.4.0 --agp 9.5.0 --gradle 9.6.0

Tools

All tools are read-only: they never write files, run commands or call other services.

Connect your agent

The hosted server speaks Streamable HTTP (MCP 2026-07-28, with a fallback for 2025 clients) and needs no sign-in. To run it on your own machine instead, use npx -y androidboss mcp as a stdio server; see the last entry.

claude mcp add --transport http androidboss https://mcp.androidboss.org/mcp

Or in .mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "androidboss": { "type": "http", "url": "https://mcp.androidboss.org/mcp" }
  }
}

codex mcp add androidboss --url https://mcp.androidboss.org/mcp

Or in .codex/config.toml:

[mcp_servers.androidboss]
url = "https://mcp.androidboss.org/mcp"

In .gemini/settings.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "androidboss": { "httpUrl": "https://mcp.androidboss.org/mcp" }
  }
}

In .cursor/mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "androidboss": { "url": "https://mcp.androidboss.org/mcp" }
  }
}

In .vscode/mcp.json:

{
  "servers": {
    "androidboss": { "type": "http", "url": "https://mcp.androidboss.org/mcp" }
  }
}

In .agents/mcp_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "androidboss": { "serverUrl": "https://mcp.androidboss.org/mcp" }
  }
}

claude mcp add androidboss -- npx -y androidboss mcp

For agents configured in JSON, add a stdio server:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "androidboss": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "androidboss", "mcp"] }
  }
}

https://androidboss.info/mcp serves the same tools from the same code, and keeps working for existing setups.

Command-line usage

androidboss <tool> [--option value]... [--json]
androidboss tools              list the tools
androidboss help <tool>        a tool's options
androidboss mcp                run as a local MCP server over stdio

Options come from each tool's input schema, so the CLI and the MCP server always accept the same inputs.

Exit codes: 0 success, 1 the tool reported an error, 2 a usage error (unknown option, missing value, unreadable file).

More examples:

# What changes when targetSdk goes to 36, checked against your manifest
npx androidboss target-sdk-changes --to 36 --manifest @app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml

# Networking libraries that publish both Android and iOS targets
npx androidboss find-kmp-libraries --category networking --targets android,ios

# Look up permissions and check a manifest for Play-restricted ones
npx androidboss android-permissions --names CAMERA,ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION --manifest @app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml

Privacy and limits

• Nothing is stored. The hosted server handles each request in memory and keeps no database; request bodies aren't logged. The CLI runs entirely on your machine.

• Inputs are capped on the hosted server to stay within Cloudflare's free tier: a mapping.txt up to 5 MB, most other inputs up to 100 KB, and a per-IP rate limit. The CLI accepts mapping files up to 100 MB.

• Mind what you send. crash_to_prompt redacts emails, tokens and IP addresses, but review crash logs before sharing them with any service.

How it's built

packages/
  core/         Tool logic in plain TypeScript. Runs in browsers, Node.js and Workers.
  data/         Data the tools read: permissions, targetSdk changes, compatibility tables,
                KMP libraries, Apple privacy keys. Refreshed from the source by scripts/.
  mcp/          The MCP server (14 tools) and its HTTP handler.
  cli/          The npm package `androidboss`: the server as commands and as a stdio server.
apps/
  mcp-worker/   mcp.androidboss.org on Cloudflare Workers.

The web tools at androidboss.info use core and data from this repository, so a fix here reaches the website, the MCP server and the CLI together.

Correctness comes from fixtures produced by the real tools. For example, packages/core/src/retrace/fixtures holds a mapping and stack traces from an R8 build together with the exact output of Google's retrace, and the implementation must reproduce it byte for byte.

Development

You need Node.js 22.23 or newer.

git clone https://github.com/androidboss-org/androidboss.git
cd androidboss
npm ci
npm test          # unit tests for every package
npm run check     # type checks

Some tests compile or run generated code with real toolchains. They're skipped unless you turn them on:

CHECK_GRADLE=1 npm test -w @androidboss/core

Contributing

Bug reports, fixes and new tools are welcome.

1. Open an issue first for anything bigger than a small fix, so we can agree on the approach. For a wrong result, include the input, the output you expected and the tool that produced it.

2. Keep tools deterministic and read-only. The same input must give the same output, with no network calls.

3. Prove it against the real tool. A change to output needs a test, ideally with a fixture produced by the official toolchain, like the existing ones.

4. Run npm test and npm run check before opening a pull request. CI runs both.

Data in packages/data comes from the update scripts in packages/data/scripts; change the script rather than editing the generated JSON by hand.

Releases

Each release has a vX.Y.Z tag matching the version in packages/cli/package.json. Pushing the tag runs the release workflow, which tests the project, publishes the CLI to npm through trusted publishing with provenance (no stored tokens; npm shows which commit and workflow built it), and creates a GitHub Release with the package tarball.

Security

Please don't report security problems in public issues. Use private vulnerability reporting instead.

Support the project

If AndroidBoss saves you time:

• ⭐ Star the repository so other Android developers can find it.

• ☕ Sponsor the work with the Sponsor button at the top of the repository.

• 🛠️ Report a wrong result or send a fix. Real-world inputs make the tools better.

Licence

MIT © AndroidBoss

The CLI bundles third-party packages under their own licences, listed in dist/THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.txt inside the npm package.

Android is a trademark of Google LLC. Kotlin® is a trademark protected by the Kotlin Foundation. AndroidBoss is an independent project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Google, JetBrains or the Kotlin Foundation.