[HN Gopher] Show HN: Firebender, a simple coding agent for Andro...
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       Show HN: Firebender, a simple coding agent for Android Engineers
        
       Hey HN, I made a simple coding agent plugin in Android Studio
       called Firebender. Here's an unedited 5-minute video where it
       writes tests for an Android app and iterates against the Gradle
       task output on its own (https://docs.firebender.com/get-
       started/agent). You can use the plugin for free, no sign up needed,
       on the jetbrains marketplace.  The agent can edit multiple files,
       run gradle tasks like tests, and use the output to improve its
       changes. At the end, it reports a git diff of all changes that can
       be accepted or rejected.  Under the hood, the agent relies on
       Claude 3.7 sonnet and a fast code apply model to speed up edits. We
       built tools to give deeper access throughout the IDE like
       IntelliJ's graph representation of kotlin/java code, "everywhere
       search" for classes, and have more integrations planned. The goal
       is for the agent to have access to all the IDE goodies that we
       engineers take for granted, to improve the agent's responses and
       ability to gather correct context. In order to improve the agent,
       there are internal evals like "tasks" and simulate the IDE which
       serves as a gym for the agent. This is heavily inspired by SWE-
       bench. Whenever tools, prompts, subagents, or models are changed,
       this gym helps find regressions quickly.  Building the UI was
       surprisingly hard. I had the great pleasure of becoming proficient
       in Java Swing (released in '96 by Netscape) to get this done right.
       Things like markdown streaming, or streaming git diffs are prone to
       layout flickering where Swing tries to recalculate where elements
       should go. We had to write our own markdown parsing and rendering
       engine that repaints Swing components only when changed portions of
       the markdown nodes. The UI tends to focus on simplifying reviewing
       AI changes, something I have a feeling we'll be doing much more in
       the coming years.  If you're an Android engineer, please let me
       know if you run into any bugs or want anything improved in the
       plugin!
        
       Author : kevo1ution
       Score  : 29 points
       Date   : 2025-03-03 17:48 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (docs.firebender.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (docs.firebender.com)
        
       | kethinov wrote:
       | Now do Waterbender for Windows apps, Airbender for macOS/iOS
       | apps, and Earthbender for Linux apps.
        
         | themanmaran wrote:
         | Long ago the four native app environments lived in harmony...
        
       | carstenhag wrote:
       | I'll try it this weekend on a hobby project. For me being able to
       | pitch this at work, the most basic requirement (among many more,
       | don't ask, German companies...) would be to know what company is
       | behind this - currently About Us says nothing and the privacy
       | policy does not mention an address.
        
         | kevo1ution wrote:
         | wow, thanks for taking the time to go through the website and
         | call out what you're seeing. I'm going to fix both of the About
         | Us and address issue in privacy policy. I'll respond again
         | after I'm done.
        
           | kevo1ution wrote:
           | this is fixed now. Added Firebender Corp (registered in
           | Delaware), with addresses. Let me know if anything else is
           | missing!
           | 
           | about: https://firebender.com/about
           | 
           | terms: https://firebender.com/tos
           | 
           | privacy: https://firebender.com/privacy
        
       | alex1115alex wrote:
       | Awesome to see Firebender launch here! My team discovered it a
       | month ago after ages of trying (and failing) to find a good
       | "Cursor but for Android Studio" and we've been using it daily
       | ever since. Yesterday, with one prompt, I was able to use the
       | "agent" feature to build an activity that outputs to the display
       | of monocular smart glasses. WITH ONE PROMPT!
       | 
       | Also, the developers are super active in their Discord and are
       | fast to fix bugs. Love this project.
        
         | kevo1ution wrote:
         | wow didn't expect you to comment here - really appreciate the
         | kind words! I have a ton of respect for what y'all are doing
         | and actually making a hardware product, AR glasses. Let me know
         | if you need anymore old Android phones for you to brick, can
         | bike over again and hand them over :)
        
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       (page generated 2025-03-03 23:00 UTC)