# Google opens Android Studio to outside coding agents and adds Gemini APIs

published: 2026-10-28T17:05:30.516Z
topic: infrastructure
source: https://the-decoder.com/google-opens-android-development-to-third-party-ai-agents-and-unveils-new-gemini-apis/
url: https://aiagentnews.io/stories/google-opens-android-studio-to-outside-coding-agents-and-adds-gemini-apis

Google is letting developers run more than 40 external coding agents, including Claude and Codex, inside Android Studio through a "Bring Your Own Agent" feature. It also released new command-line tools, an alpha Agentic API built on Gemini Nano 4, and a preview platform that connects app services to Google Search and the Gemini app.

With Android Studio Rabbit 2, developers can run agents such as Anthropic's Claude Agent, OpenAI's Codex and Google Antigravity directly in the IDE through the Agent Client Protocol. These agents get access to project structure, symbol resolution, the emulator and Logcat. Google also released version 2.0 of the Android Bench leaderboard, which scores models on multi-day development projects by functionality, time spent and cost.

The Android CLI is now available as an agent plugin for Claude Code, Codex and Antigravity, and agents can render Compose previews in the terminal without booting an emulator. Google's internal tests found agents finished UI tasks 77 percent faster using up to three times fewer tokens. LeakCanary has been built into the CLI and the Android Studio Profiler, and in a Google A/B test with Claude Opus 5.5 it found and fixed memory leaks nearly twice as fast while cutting token usage by about 25 percent.

For apps, Google is launching an alpha Agentic API in ML Kit powered by Gemini Nano 4, and the AppFunctions API in beta as a tool-calling layer built on the Model Context Protocol. The Connected Apps Platform, now in preview, lets developers link apps to Google Search and Gemini through Android MCP or cloud-hosted MCP servers. Google says more than 50 partner integrations are already live in the Gemini app.

## Why it matters if you build agents

Agent developers can now use Claude, Codex or Antigravity inside Android Studio and the terminal, with access to IDE tools and Android-specific checks such as Compose previews and crash reports.

Apps can expose their functions to local and system-wide agents through AppFunctions and MCP, so it is worth evaluating those interfaces now.

Several pieces, including the Agentic API and the Connected Apps Platform, are still alpha or preview, so their interfaces may change before general release.