Skainet Android Integration

skainet-android-integration

Android-specific concerns for SKaiNET consumers: how to load model files from assets/, which ABIs to ship, where to call forward(...) so the UI stays responsive, and how to react to memory pressure.

When to use

• Building or editing an Android app that depends on SKaiNET.
• Loading a .gguf / .safetensors / .onnx from src/main/assets/ (or a downloaded cache file).
• Wiring inference into a ViewModel, Service, WorkManager, or Composable.
• Configuring the Android Gradle plugin (androidTarget, minSdk, ndk.abiFilters).
• Diagnosing "model loads on emulator but crashes on real device" — almost always an ABI / memory issue.

When NOT to use

• The user is editing files inside the SKaiNET repo itself (contributor kmp skill).
• The dependency itself is missing — skainet-consumer-setup.
• The user is calling SKaiNET from a non-Android JVM context — skainet-inference covers it without Android specifics.
• Java-only Android consumers (the ones who don't use Kotlin Coroutines) — coordinate with skainet-java-consumer for the Maven deps; threading still applies here.

Hard rules

1. minSdk = 24. SKaiNET's Android target is built for minSdk = 24, compileSdk = 36. Lower is unsupported; higher is fine.
2. Ship ARM64 at minimum; ARM32 only if you must. The CPU backend has NEON paths for both, but ARM64 is the primary target. Do not ship x86 / x86_64 unless you specifically support emulator-only builds — production devices are ARM. Configure ndk.abiFilters accordingly to keep APK size down.
3. Never call forward(...) on the main thread. Use viewModelScope.launch { withContext(Dispatchers.Default) { ... } } from a ViewModel, or lifecycleScope.launch { ... } from an Activity/Fragment. The CPU backend can take hundreds of ms to seconds; the main thread has a 16 ms budget.
4. Open assets with context.assets.open(name). Don't decode the path as a File — there is no path inside the APK. Use a RandomAccessSource factory that wraps the InputStream if the loader needs random access (some loaders do; SafeTensors and GGUF need random access — read the asset to a cache file in context.cacheDir and load from there if random access is required).
5. Hold one ExecutionContext and one Module on the Application object (or in a DI scope spanning the app lifetime). They're heavyweight; per-Activity construction is wasteful.
6. React to onTrimMemory(level). When level >= TRIM_MEMORY_BACKGROUND, drop the Module (and any cached tensors); rebuild on next access. Holding multi-GB models across a backgrounded app is a sure path to LMK kills.
7. Cache the model file once. If the asset is a multi-GB GGUF that must be unpacked from the APK, copy it to context.filesDir (or context.cacheDir) on first launch and load from there subsequently. Loading from assets/ repeatedly extracts on every cold start.

Workflow

1. Add the SKaiNET BOM + skainet-lang-core + skainet-backend-cpu (see skainet-consumer-setup). For loaders, add skainet-io-core + the format-specific artifact.
2. Pick where to host the ExecutionContext and Module — usually a singleton tied to Application lifetime, or a Hilt/Koin app-scope binding.
3. Load the model file (asset, downloaded cache, or remote): see Canonical examples.
4. Wire the forward pass through a coroutine on Dispatchers.Default.
5. Handle onTrimMemory to release the Module under pressure.
6. Test on a real ARM64 device — emulators don't surface ABI / NEON issues.

Canonical examples

Application-scoped model holder:

class SkainetApp : Application() {
    private val ctx = DirectCpuExecutionContext.create()
    private val modelMutex = Mutex()
    private var module: Module<FP32, Float>? = null

    fun executionContext(): ExecutionContext = ctx

    suspend fun model(): Module<FP32, Float> = modelMutex.withLock {
        module ?: loadModel().also { module = it }
    }

    private suspend fun loadModel(): Module<FP32, Float> = withContext(Dispatchers.IO) {
        // see "Loading from assets" below
    }

    override fun onTrimMemory(level: Int) {
        super.onTrimMemory(level)
        if (level >= TRIM_MEMORY_BACKGROUND) {
            module = null  // GC reclaims; reload next forward
        }
    }
}

Loading a GGUF from assets via cacheDir (random-access loaders need a real file):

private suspend fun copyAssetIfNeeded(context: Context, name: String): java.io.File =
    withContext(Dispatchers.IO) {
        val target = java.io.File(context.cacheDir, name)
        if (!target.exists()) {
            context.assets.open(name).use { input ->
                target.outputStream().use { output -> input.copyTo(output) }
            }
        }
        target
    }

private suspend fun loadGGUF(context: Context): GGUFModelReader = withContext(Dispatchers.IO) {
    val file = copyAssetIfNeeded(context, "model-q4.gguf")
    GGUFModelReader(/* RandomAccessSource factory wrapping `file` */)
}

Inference in a ViewModel:

class ClassifyViewModel(
    private val app: SkainetApp,
    private val pre: Transform<Bitmap, Tensor<FP32, Float>>
) : AndroidViewModel(app) {

    private val _result = MutableStateFlow<List<Float>?>(null)
    val result: StateFlow<List<Float>?> = _result

    fun classify(bitmap: Bitmap) {
        viewModelScope.launch {
            val tensor = pre(bitmap)
            val module = app.model()
            val out = withContext(Dispatchers.Default) {
                module.forward(tensor, app.executionContext())
            }
            _result.value = out.toFloatList()
        }
    }
}

viewModelScope ensures the launch is cancelled if the ViewModel is destroyed mid-inference. Dispatchers.Default is the right pool for CPU-bound forward passes.

Asset-resident SafeTensors via cache-first pattern (same idea as GGUF):

suspend fun loadSafeTensors(context: Context, ctx: ExecutionContext, module: Module<FP32, Float>) {
    val file = copyAssetIfNeeded(context, "weights.safetensors")
    val loader = SafeTensorsParametersLoader(
        sourceProvider = { JvmFileRandomAccessSource(file) }
    )
    loader.load(ctx, FP32::class) { name, tensor ->
        module.setParameter(name, tensor)
    }
}

build.gradle.kts (consumer Android module) — ABI filters:

android {
    namespace = "com.example.skainetapp"
    compileSdk = 36

    defaultConfig {
        applicationId = "com.example.skainetapp"
        minSdk = 24
        targetSdk = 36
        ndk { abiFilters += listOf("arm64-v8a") }      // primary
        // add "armeabi-v7a" only if you must support 32-bit ARM devices
    }
}

dependencies {
    implementation(platform(libs.skainet.bom))
    implementation(libs.skainet.lang.core)
    implementation(libs.skainet.backend.cpu)
    implementation(libs.skainet.io.core)
    implementation(libs.skainet.io.gguf)
}

Related skills

• Adding the SKaiNET artifacts to your Android app — ../skainet-consumer-setup/SKILL.md.
• The actual inference call (dispatcher, batch, phase) — ../skainet-inference/SKILL.md.
• File format choice and loaders — ../skainet-model-loading/SKILL.md.
• Building the input tensor from a Bitmap — ../skainet-data-dsl/SKILL.md for the tensor side; preprocessing chains via skainet-data-transform.

Anti-patterns

// WRONG — loading on every Activity onResume
override fun onResume() {
    super.onResume()
    val module = sequential<FP32, Float> { /* ... */ }   // expensive each time
    val ctx = DirectCpuExecutionContext.create()
}

// RIGHT — Application-scoped singleton
val app = applicationContext as SkainetApp
val module = app.model()
val ctx = app.executionContext()

// WRONG — assets opened as a File path (path doesn't exist inside the APK)
val reader = GGUFModelReader(JvmFileRandomAccessSource(File("file:///android_asset/model.gguf")))

// RIGHT — copy to cacheDir, load from there
val file = copyAssetIfNeeded(context, "model.gguf")
val reader = GGUFModelReader(/* source factory wrapping `file` */)

// WRONG — forward on the main thread / from a Composable directly
@Composable
fun Result(input: Tensor<FP32, Float>) {
    val out = model.forward(input, ctx)   // blocks UI for hundreds of ms
    Text(out.toString())
}

// RIGHT — collect from a StateFlow / Flow that runs forward on Default
@Composable
fun Result(viewModel: ClassifyViewModel) {
    val r by viewModel.result.collectAsState()
    Text(r?.toString() ?: "loading…")
}

// WRONG — shipping every ABI inflates APK
android.defaultConfig { /* no abiFilters → all ABIs included */ }

// RIGHT — only ARM64 (and optionally ARM32)
android.defaultConfig { ndk { abiFilters += "arm64-v8a" } }

// WRONG — ignoring memory pressure
override fun onTrimMemory(level: Int) { super.onTrimMemory(level) }

// RIGHT — drop the Module under pressure
override fun onTrimMemory(level: Int) {
    super.onTrimMemory(level)
    if (level >= TRIM_MEMORY_BACKGROUND) module = null
}

References

• references/asset-loading.md — patterns for assets/ vs. downloaded files vs. APK-extracted caches; loader compatibility.
• references/lifecycle-and-threading.md — viewModelScope, lifecycleScope, WorkManager, Service patterns; onTrimMemory reference table; ABI filter recommendations.