Conquest Code

A fast, native, open-source IDE for Android — in the spirit of Zed, built for foldables and tablets, running entirely on your device.

⚠️ Early development. The foundations (Rust engine, JNI bridge, adaptive UI shell) are in place; the editor itself is being built. Nothing here is usable as a daily driver yet.

What this is

Conquest Code aims to be for Android what Zed is for the desktop: an IDE that opens instantly, never drops a frame while you type, and treats AI agents as first-class citizens through the Agent Client Protocol (ACP).

• Truly local. Everything — editing, syntax highlighting, language servers, terminals, agents — runs on the Android device. No cloud workspace, no remote VS instance, no account.
• Zed's engine, not a lookalike. The core reuses Zed's actual Rust crates (rope/CRDT text engine, tree-sitter integration, grammar assets) compiled for Android with the NDK.
• Built for big and small screens. Foldables and tablets get a full workspace (project panel, splits, docks); phones get a slimmer, focused layout. Same app, adaptive UI.
• A real Linux userland. The terminal runs a genuine Debian through proot — apt install whatever you need, from Debian's own repositories, on your phone. The terminal emulation builds on the excellent work of Termux.
• AI-native via ACP. ACP is a standard and the panel is agent-agnostic: any ACP-speaking agent you configure can run against your project, with the same panel-based agent UX Zed pioneered.
• No telemetry. No analytics. Ever. In the tradition of VSCodium: the user's code and behavior are nobody's business.

Architecture in one paragraph

A Rust engine (core/) owns everything that isn't pixels: buffers (Zed's rope/CRDT), syntax (tree-sitter), language intelligence (LSP), project state, git, and ACP agent sessions. A Kotlin/Jetpack Compose app (app/) owns everything visual and platform-specific: rendering, input, window/fold awareness, storage access. The two meet at one deliberately narrow, coarse-grained JNI boundary. See docs/ARCHITECTURE.md for the long version, docs/BUILDING.md to build it yourself, and docs/SHORTCUTS.md for the keyboard and mouse bindings — the app is meant to be driven from a keyboard, including in Samsung DeX.

Status

Area	State
Rust core ↔ Kotlin JNI pipeline	✅ working end-to-end
Adaptive workspace shell (tablet/phone)	✅ first version
Rope/CRDT text engine (from Zed)	✅ vendored & wired through JNI
Tree-sitter syntax highlighting	✅ in-engine, 21 languages
Custom high-performance editor surface	✅ v1: virtualized canvas, IME editing, selection & clipboard, Zed themes
Project tree (Zed worktree in-engine)	✅ lazy, gitignore-aware; open files from the panel
Tabs, save & external change detection	✅ dirty dots, atomic save, live reload
Projects: create, switch, import & export	✅ app-private storage, SAF folder import/export
Fuzzy file finder	✅ Ctrl+P, match highlighting
Command palette	✅ Ctrl+Shift+P, every command with its chord, Zed's action names
Find in file	✅ Ctrl+F, case/word/regex, every match highlighted
Search across the project	✅ engine-side, cancellable, gitignore-aware
Multiple cursors & line operations	✅ Ctrl+D, cursors above/below, move/duplicate/delete line, toggle comment
Autoclose, auto-indent, indent guides	✅ from the language's own brackets
Project panel as a file manager	✅ new/rename/delete/duplicate, context menu, full keyboard
Docks	✅ each panel left or right by setting, one per dock, both resizable
Themes	✅ eleven of Zed's own, with a live-preview picker
Settings	✅ JSONC file that keeps your comments, settings screen
Integrated terminal	✅ shells in the project directory, tabs, theme colours, keyboard/mouse/touch
Terminal sessions survive backgrounding	✅ foreground service, notification with Stop all, survives a swipe from Recents
Debian userland (apt)	✅ in the full edition — installs on demand, ~30 MB
Clone a repository into a project	✅ progress and cancel (full edition)
Git status colours in the project panel	✅ engine-side, from the theme's own colours
Git panel	✅ Ctrl+Shift+G, stage/unstage/discard/commit, keyboard and touch
Diff bars in the gutter, inline blame	✅ Zed's own widths and colours; blame while the file is clean
Diff view, history, push	✅ unified diffs as tabs, Changes/History tabs, push and publish
Commit graph	✅ lanes, refs, paging, per-commit files
Markdown and SVG preview	✅ the toolbar's 👁, split beside the editor or full screen
Images, audio and video	✅ opened as media, never as a text buffer
Soft wrap	✅ soft_wrap, off by default as in Zed
Go to line	✅ Ctrl+G, 42:8, Escape puts everything back
Code folding	✅ from the language's own syntax tree, gutter chevrons and chords
Breadcrumbs & outline	✅ the symbol path at the caret, Ctrl+Shift+O for the picker
Sticky headers in the project panel	✅ ancestors pin above the list, as in Zed
Navigation history	✅ back and forward across the places you jumped from
Language servers on-device	✅ diagnostics, completions, hover, go-to-definition; servers installed with apt (full edition)
Interface size	✅ Ctrl+= / Ctrl+- / Ctrl+0, and a settings row — all the chrome scales
ACP agent panel	✅ conversations with any ACP agent — permission-gated edits, unified diff review, plans; agents are configured in agent_servers (settings.json or the Settings screen), none are bundled or named in code (full edition)

Editions

Two builds come out of this repository, and the difference is worth knowing before you download one:

• full — includes the Debian userland, so apt works. Android only permits that at an older target SDK, which Google Play does not accept, so this edition comes from F-Droid or a direct APK.
• play — Play-compatible. Everything else is identical; the terminal runs Android's own shell and there is no apt.

See docs/BUILDING.md for the details and docs/USERLAND.md for what the userland can do.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Testing on real foldables and tablets is especially valuable.

License & credits

Conquest Code is licensed under GPL-3.0-or-later (see LICENSE). It stands on the shoulders of:

• Zed (GPL-3.0 / Apache-2.0) — the engine crates this project reuses, and the design north star.
• Termux (GPLv3, with an Apache-2.0 heritage from Android Terminal Emulator) — its terminal-emulator and terminal-view libraries are vendored here under vendor/, and its work is the reference for running a real userland on Android.
• proot (GPL-2.0) — the userspace chroot that lets a Linux distribution run without root.
• Debian — the userland itself, and the package archive behind it.
• VSCodium (MIT) — proof that a community can keep an IDE honest.

Full provenance, licences and the source offer for the binaries we ship are in docs/THIRD_PARTY.md.

This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Zed Industries, Termux, Debian, or VSCodium.