I built an open-source tool to edit Jetpack Compose on-device via AST mutations (No Gradle rebuilds)

GALAL ALDEEN ABAS — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 04:54:53 +0000

Every Android developer knows the frustration of the iteration loop in Jetpack Compose. While Live Edit has improved, it remains volatile—your changes disappear the moment the process restarts. On the other hand, triggering a full Gradle build just to tweak padding, colors, or layout hierarchy eats up minutes of valuable engineering time.

To solve this, I built ComposeBridge—an open-source system that decouples UI tuning from your physical workstation and turns your actual device into a live AST code controller.

🛠 How It Works Under the Hood

ComposeBridge isn't just an in-memory preview swapper. It applies permanent, compile-ready modifications:

AST-Guided Source Mutation: When you adjust a UI token or modifier on your physical device, the operational delta is sent back to your host machine over an encrypted tunnel. A headless background daemon uses Tree-sitter to parse the Kotlin source tree, locate the exact Composable call site, and safely mutate the source file directly on disk.
Visual Diff & Granular Rollbacks: Every file modified by the remote client is buffered. You can review color-coded visual diffs directly on your phone and tap [Accept All / Rollback] to ensure code integrity.
Remote Over-The-Air (OTA) Builds: When you're ready for a full run, trigger a headless Gradle build remotely. The progress is streamed back to your phone, and the compiled APK is pushed and installed over-the-air.
Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server: Features a built-in MCP server exposing 27 tools, allowing external AI coding agents to inspect the AST, analyze tokens, and perform autonomous refactoring loops.

🎁 Free Lifetime Pro License for Early Beta Testers

I am actively looking for Android / Compose engineers to test the integration and provide architectural feedback on:

AST mutation safety in complex codebases.
Latency and stability during OTA build delivery.
Developer experience across different screen sizes.

In exchange for your feedback, I am offering a Free Lifetime Pro License to the first 50 developers who test the plugin!

🚀 Get Started

📦 GitHub Repository: JALAL591/compose-bridge
🔌 JetBrains Marketplace Plugin: ComposeBridge on Marketplace

Give it a run on your setup, and let me know your thoughts or report any edge cases in the comments below!

DEV Community: GALAL ALDEEN ABAS

I built an open-source tool to edit Jetpack Compose on-device via AST mutations (No Gradle rebuilds)

🛠 How It Works Under the Hood

🎁 Free Lifetime Pro License for Early Beta Testers

🚀 Get Started