Requirements

Deputy Shell requires Android 14 or later on a 64-bit ARM device. It has not been broadly validated across the wide range of Android hardware, and support is expanding gradually rather than claimed for "all Android devices."

Android version

• Minimum: Android 14 (API level 34).
• Target/built against: Android 16 (API level 36).

Architecture

Deputy Shell currently requires a device whose primary CPU architecture is arm64-v8a (64-bit ARM). Devices with a different primary architecture are rejected with a clear "unsupported device" message before any runtime download starts, rather than failing partway through setup.

Physical device vs. emulator

Full command execution (Git, Python, Node.js, curl, ripgrep, and Codex) has been validated on a physical Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra running Android 14. Android emulators (which typically run on x86_64) can be used to check installation and the user interface, but they cannot run Deputy Shell's ARM64 development runtime at all — the app's own architecture check will report the device as unsupported on such an emulator.

16 KB memory page-size devices

Newer Android devices may use a 16 KB memory page size instead of the traditional 4 KB. Deputy Shell's packaging has been verified to meet the 16 KB alignment requirements, but it has not yet been run on a physical 16 KB-page-size device — this remains under evaluation.

Storage and network

• Expect roughly 500 MB of download for the initial runtime setup, and more on-device space once it's extracted.
• A network connection is required for initial setup, for update checks, and for Codex. Core terminal and file features work offline once setup is complete.