Claude Code Inside Android Studio: Bring Your Own Agent and the Android CLI Plugin

Know what shipped

Two separate things shipped on the same day:

• Bring Your Own Agent (BYOA) in Android Studio Rabbit 2. Any agent that speaks the open Agent Client Protocol (ACP) runs in the IDE's agent window. Google names Claude Agent, Codex, Junie and Google Antigravity, and says more than 40 are supported, with access to the emulator, the build system and Logcat. ACP works like LSP for agents: the IDE starts the agent as a local process and they talk JSON-RPC over stdio.
• The Android CLI plugin for Claude Code and Codex. It adds one skill, android-cli, that teaches the agent the android command: create projects, manage the SDK and emulators, build, run, capture the screen and read the layout.

One thing to know before you start: Google's blog calls BYOA stable, but the IDE still labels the agent settings and the agent picker "This feature is in preview". Expect it to change between releases.

Install Android Studio Rabbit 2

Run on a Mac for this guide

BYOA needs Rabbit 2. Check what you have first; the Mac used here had 2024.3, which is too old:

defaults read "/Applications/Android Studio.app/Contents/Info.plist" CFBundleShortVersionString
# 2024.3 here. Rabbit 2 reports 2026.2

Download the current stable release from developer.android.com/studio: Android Studio Rabbit 2, 2026.2.2 Patch 1. Inside Studio, Android Studio, Check for Updates gets you there too.

To keep an older Studio for a project that needs it, copy the new app to another folder under a different name instead of replacing it. Each version keeps its own settings folder. On this Mac, where an older Studio and the Android SDK were already set up, Rabbit 2 opened straight into the project with no setup wizard.

Add Claude Agent from the marketplace

Run on a Mac for this guide

Open Android Studio, Settings, then Tools, AI, Agents. The Marketplace tab lists the agents, with four recommended at the top:

The versions match the public ACP registry, which listed 45 agents on November 9, among them Cline, Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, goose, Kiro CLI, Mistral Vibe and OpenCode. That is where the "40+" comes from.

Select Claude Agent and click Install. It is not a download in the usual sense: Studio saves a command, npx -y @agentclientprotocol/claude-agent-acp, and runs it when you pick the agent. So you need Node.js with npx on the machine. The package is the ACP adapter for the Claude Agent SDK; the listing credits Anthropic, Zed Industries and JetBrains.

Under Authentication Method there is a Sign in (Anthropic Console) button for an API key. I did not use it. On this Mac, where Claude Code was already logged in to a Claude plan, the agent answered straight away with no sign-in step, as the next step shows. Google's notes say you can sign in with a subscription or an API key, subject to the agent's provider.

Pick the agent and give it a read-only task

Run on a Mac for this guide

Open the Agent tool window and click the agent icon at the top right of the panel. The picker lists the built-in agent, Google Antigravity and every agent you installed.

Start with something that cannot change your code. I asked: "Read the code and tell me in three sentences what this app shows on screen and where that text comes from. Do not change any files."

It read six files, found the strings, and added something I had not asked: despite the app's name, nothing on screen counts launches. That is the right kind of answer to get before you let an agent edit anything.

Let it build with the IDE's tools

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This is the part that a terminal agent does not get. I asked Claude Agent which Android Studio tools it had, and to build the debug variant without changing files. It listed the tools Studio hands it, all prefixed mcp__ide-tools__studio_, and ran the build through Studio's own Gradle tool:

The tools load on demand. In this session it used read_file, grep and gradle_build. I did not run the emulator or Logcat tools from inside the IDE.

Outside the IDE: the Android CLI plugin

Run on a Mac for this guide

If you work in a terminal, or want an agent in CI, you do not need the IDE. Install the Android CLI first; the plugin only teaches the agent how to use it. Google's download page offers Homebrew (brew tap android/tap, then brew install android-cli), an install script, or the binary itself. I took the binary for Apple silicon, so nothing touched my shell profile:

curl -fsSL -o android https://dl.google.com/android/cli/latest/darwin_arm64/android
chmod +x android && mv android ~/bin/   # any folder on your PATH

android --version   # 1.1.16717390 here
android info        # found the SDK in ~/Library/Android/sdk

Then add the plugin to Claude Code. Google's docs give the user-level install; I used --scope project so it only applies to the project folder:

claude plugin marketplace add android/android-cli-plugin --scope project
claude plugin install android-cli@android-cli-plugin --scope project

# inside a session, the same thing:
/plugin marketplace add android/android-cli-plugin
/plugin install android-cli@android-cli-plugin

The plugin is small: one skill, Apache-2.0, no hooks and no MCP server. I read it before installing. Then I gave Claude Code one prompt, headless, with only the android, adb and file tools allowed:

Use the android-cli skill for everything Android.
1) Create a new Android app from the empty-activity template,
   named Launch Counter, in ./launch-counter.
2) Change the greeting so the screen says: Hello from Claude Code.
3) If no device is connected, start the existing Pixel_9 emulator
   (do not create new AVDs).
4) Build the app, install and launch it on the emulator.
5) Save a screenshot to ./out/app.png and the layout JSON to
   ./out/layout.json. Keep a short log of every android command.

It loaded the android-cli skill, and 56 turns and 7.9 minutes later the emulator showed the app. Claude Code reported $1.34 of usage for the run. The commands it ran, from its own log:

The useful part for an agent is that it can check its own work: android layout returns the screen as JSON, so the agent confirmed "Hello from Claude Code" was on screen without anyone looking at it.

Fix what breaks on a real machine

Run on a Mac for this guide

Four things failed on the first try. The agent got past each one, and you should know them:

1. android build from the project root fails. It looked for :assembleDebug on the root project. :app, ./app and app/ failed too. The full Gradle task works: android build :app:assembleDebug.
2. The emulator image was missing. The existing Pixel 9 emulator pointed at a system image that was not installed. android sdk install fixed it in 43 seconds.
3. The emulator skin was missing. The emulator refused to start with "unknown skin name 'pixel_9'", headless or not. The agent edited two lines in the emulator's config.ini to run without a skin. That file is outside the project: it kept a copy, and I put the original back afterwards. Allow file edits only inside the project if you do not want that.
4. The boot wait timed out. android emulator start booted the emulator but its own wait failed with an adb "closed" error. adb wait-for-device confirmed the boot, and everything after worked.

One more, from the template itself: the empty-activity template's own UI test expected text that did not match its greeting. The agent fixed the test while changing the greeting, but did not run it.