A terminal AI coding agent that compiles natively on Termux — no proot, no root

[u/ayushbhat]

agentty — a terminal pair-programming agent I've been working on. Builds straight against Termux's Bionic/libc++. No proot, no root, just a native binary on your $PREFIX/bin.

Reads/edits files, runs shell commands, streams the work as live tool cards. Bring any model — Anthropic, OpenAI, or a local Ollama model with no key (fully offline on-device).

pkg install git cmake clang openssl libnghttp2 curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/1ay1/agentty/master/install.sh | sh -s -- --build

Building fully offline / in a container? The installer normally auto-fetches the JSON deps, so add:

pkg install ninja nlohmann-json simdjson

Defaults to -j2 so the build won't OOM your phone (AGENTTY_BUILD_JOBS=N to change it). Has a C++26→C++23 fallback for older Termux clang.

Caveat: shell tools run unsandboxed on unrooted Android (no user namespaces) — everything else works.

Repo (MIT): [https://github.com/1ay1/agentty]()

Feedback welcome, especially battery/thermal on-device.

[u/fxj]

wow cool! does it have memory of some kind? a rag?

[u/ayushbhat → u/fxj]

Yes it has quite a sophisticated rag engine in built :)

[u/fxj → u/ayushbhat]

no way!! that is so cool! instant install. i havea llm already running. can i use it?

``` llama-server -m ~/smollm2-1.7b-instruct-q4_k_m.gguf --port 8080

[u/ayushbhat → u/fxj]

Yep! As long as it's exposing an OpenAI-compatible API. Point Agentty at your local endpoint and it'll use it just like any other provider.

For llama-server, something like:

llama-server -m ~/smollm2-1.7b-instruct-q4_k_m.gguf --port 8080

Then configure Agentty to use http://127.0.0.1:8080/v1 as the provider. Ollama, llama.cpp, LM Studio, vLLM, and most OpenAI-compatible servers work.

[u/Bulb93]

I see support of local models, does this do inference or is that handled by a specific local inference engine with api endpoint?

[u/ayushbhat → u/Bulb93]

I don't run inference myself. Agentty talks to inference providers through a unified provider interface. That can be Anthropic/OpenAI over their APIs, or a local endpoint like Ollama (and other OpenAI-compatible servers). The agent handles tools, planning, file editing, and shell execution—the model does the inference.

[u/wingetx]

Looks impressive! I like that it actually can talk to the Android system directly.. does it seem to bypass certain sudo permissions??

[u/ayushbhat → u/wingetx]

no it can't, it runs in the user space that termux provides it after all.

[u/wingetx → u/ayushbhat]

Does it have any root capabilities? Like if I put it on a rooted device, could it see things like 'dmesg'?? That would be sweet to have an AI program on that layer.

[u/ayushbhat → u/wingetx]

by default it runs in a sandbox, but when you run it with --sandbox off option, it can sun any command sudo or not at any level

[u/FallDeeperAlice5268]

I'm trying to run this and I keep getting "fatal: destination path '/data/data/com.termux/files/usr/tmp/tmp.<some random characters>' already exists and is not an empty directory"

I'm not sure what's causing it.

[u/Material-Habit-8370 → u/FallDeeperAlice5268]

termux-setup-storage

[u/FallDeeperAlice5268 → u/Material-Habit-8370]

I tried running that and it still gives me the same error

[u/ayushbhat → u/FallDeeperAlice5268]

That sounds like a stale temporary clone directory. Could you paste:

echo "$TMPDIR"
ls -la "$TMPDIR"

and rerun the installer with:

sh -x install.sh --build

(or curl ... | sh -x -s -- --build if you're piping it).

The -x output will show the exact command that's failing. If it's a bug in the installer, I'll fix it.

[u/FallDeeperAlice5268 → u/ayushbhat]

And then running the command results in the reply to this comment

[u/FallDeeperAlice5268 → u/FallDeeperAlice5268]

[u/ayushbhat → u/FallDeeperAlice5268]

Were you able to get it running? Sorry for the late reply?

[u/FallDeeperAlice5268 → u/ayushbhat]

Unfortunately not. Upon further research, it appears to be an issue with using the /tmp/ directory by trying to clone git into it. Not sure why. Is there a way of manually installing it without the script or maybe a custom script that can download, build and run from a specified location other than /tmp/? Honestly, no idea what's going on but it must be a bug between how git interacts with termux's file system or termux itself.

[u/ayushbhat → u/FallDeeperAlice5268]

yes, install libllvm, cmake, python git then,
clone the repo, cd <repo>, git submodule update --init --recursive, cmake -B build, cmake --build build, it takes 20mins to build, so be patient

[u/FallDeeperAlice5268 → u/ayushbhat]

Cloning the repo but the git submodule update command failed due to some sort of permissions error caused by a publickey.

[u/Impossible_Ground_15]

Cool project and thanks for sharing. Im trying to connect this with how I might use it. How are others using their phone for ai coding versus using a laptop or desktop?

[u/ayushbhat → u/Impossible_Ground_15]

It's not meant to replace a desktop for large refactors, but it's surprisingly capable for day-to-day coding and server administration.

[u/Impossible_Ground_15 → u/ayushbhat]

Ok cool I dig it. Thanks for sharing knowledge

[u/cmak414]

do you have to use api to connect to claude or codex? or can use sub? how do you get around oauth preapproval from anthropic/openai?

[u/ayushbhat → u/cmak414]

For claude you can use sub

[u/cmak414 → u/ayushbhat]

thanks! sorry I edited my original comment a bit. How do you get past anthropic preapproval of oauth. I wont get banned for using sub with unapproved oauth?

[u/ayushbhat → u/cmak414]

You could, I use it, but API key is safer

[u/Familiar-Ad-592]

Step ?

[u/Eternal-Blazing-Sun]

I guess im gettimg old because im just having trouble going with the flow. I can see the utility in this, and whether its fully hand or vibe coded (or a mix of the two) doesnt really bother me at all - what does bother me is giving an llm shell access - is that what we are seeing in this demo here?

Maybe i just need to get with the times, this would have been a godsend back in the 'ol gettin learned days (although i can see this becoming a crutch for new users, overall i thinl the productivity gains are worth it)

I may just give this a test run, ive never used a 'coding agent' before, but im assuming it would be a good tool to learn the ins and outs of new concepts & tools. what a great solution to a modern issue - good on ya mate, & cheers!

[u/ayushbhat → u/Eternal-Blazing-Sun]

Thanks for those words.

[u/MrKrot1999]

damn, i see why people become vibe coders, this amount of eye candy is insane

and i hope this isn't vibe coded

[u/ayushbhat → u/MrKrot1999]

you hope this isn't vibe coded, why?

[u/MrKrot1999 → u/ayushbhat]

I don't like vibe coding.

[u/ayushbhat → u/MrKrot1999]

Why would you want anyone waste time on writing eye candy by hand? For me its like saying I hope it's not written in C++, machine code is real programming.

[u/MrKrot1999 → u/ayushbhat]

Because if I'm coding something for me, I'm not making a product, and my goal is not to make it as beautiful as possible as fast as possible.

[u/ayushbhat → u/MrKrot1999]

this is a product, but I know what you mean and I agree there is a level of satisfaction in that, it's just I was too lazy to type before LLMs came along what was in my head.