Fair to be skeptical, but it isn't the model being asked nicely. Buddy checks every tap itself: when the button is Send, Post, Buy, Pay, Delete and similar (by its label or id, in several languages), Buddy stops and shows an approval card, whatever the model wants. It's a word list, so an oddly named button can slip through; it's all in Guard.java if you want to look: https://github.com/ghorbelhamdi/buddy-android/blob/main/app/src/main/java/app/buddy/assistant/Guard.java

I ain't your buddy, friend.

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.

Fair question, so here are real ones:

• Accessibility: with live voice (real-time, through your ChatGPT plan) you just talk to it. It does the tapping and reads things back, which helps people who can't easily see or use a touchscreen.
• Testing apps: it exposes the phone as an MCP server, so Claude Code or Codex can drive your app on a real device for UI testing.
• Building apps on the phone itself: Buddy was mostly developed that way, with Claude Code running on the phone and using Buddy's own phone tools to install and test each build.

It asks before anything is sent or bought and stops when you touch the screen. Not for everyone, and that's fine.

Fair concern, and it's not for everyone. The agent only sees the screen while it's doing a task you gave it, it asks before anything is sent, and it's open source, so you can check exactly what it does. If you'd rather not hand that to an AI, that's a completely reasonable choice.

It's just an MCP server for the phone with an app to control it, basically computer use, but for Android. Agents using computers are already normal, so I'm not sure why phones would be different. And it runs on your own plan, or on local models if you'd rather keep it off the cloud entirely.

I did appeal. Google's answer, word for word: "the app utilizes the accessibility API for performing autonomous actions... The accessibility API is not designed and cannot be requested for performing autonomous tasks." So the problem was the agent acting on its own, not which AI services it uses.

The accessibility-tool exception is only for apps built mainly for people with disabilities. Buddy can help there, but it does a lot more, so claiming that wouldn't be honest. If anyone has gotten an agent app like this through review, I'm open to trying again.

Thanks, and thanks for the crosspost! Local models already work: in Settings you can add a custom OpenAI-compatible address (llama.cpp, Ollama or LM Studio on your network) and use it with OpenCode. It works best with models that are good at tool calling, since everything goes through phone tools.

Other devices: it's built for phones, but someone already forked it to run on a Nintendo Switch with Android, with Joy-Con navigation: https://github.com/Lendss/buddy-switch. So other Android devices are clearly possible, I just haven't tested watches, TVs or XR myself.

F-Droid: good timing. Buddy now builds all its native parts (proot, talloc and friends) from source in CI, with no prebuilt binaries in the repo, which was the main thing in the way. So an F-Droid build should be doable now. Until then, releases are on GitHub and the app updates itself.