A phone agent that actually lives on your phone

What it does It runs DeepSeek Harness (dsh) natively on Android and lets the agent operate your phone: read the screen, tap, type, manage files, tweak system settings, and fire scheduled or condition-based automations. You talk to it via a floating ball from any app, and it can pause or take your mid-task input. It also carries a small Linux environment, so the agent can run Python and its own scripts on your files.

The interesting bit Node 24 is compiled as an Android native shared library (libnode.so) and launched via JNI in a foreground service — no proot, no Termux, and it sidesteps Android 12’s phantom-process killing. The dsh engine itself is unmodified; all Android adaptation lives in plugins, with device capabilities implemented in Kotlin and exposed over a private socket bridge.

Key highlights

• Full dsh feature set: skills, MCP, sub-agents, web search
• Works across apps — WeChat messages, Taobao ordering, job applications, file cleanup
• Android 14+ “do-not-disturb mode”: agent works on a virtual display while you keep using your phone (needs Shizuku or self-connected ADB)
• Optional Shizuku unlocks more system toggles; root never required
• Supports many providers beyond DeepSeek (OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, Kimi, GLM, etc.) via OpenAI-compatible endpoints; can also SSH out to a DSH on your PC

Caveats

• Can’t operate other apps’ UIs while the device is locked (system API tasks still work)
• Third-party models are limited to OpenAI-compatible Chat Completions, context capped at 128K, and web search still requires a DeepSeek key
• ~5-second engine cold start; some Chinese ROMs need manual permission fiddling for the floating ball and background automation

Verdict If you want a real on-device agent that drives your Android phone without root or a laptop, this is one of the more serious attempts. If you’re outside DeepSeek’s ecosystem or on non-arm64 hardware, look elsewhere — and expect Play Protect to grumble at the sideloaded APK.