Getting started

The Cellar engine is a single static binary that runs today under Termux — the Android app that wraps it is in development. If you can paste a few commands, you can run an AI agent on your phone tonight.

Install

You need Termux (from F-Droid or GitHub — the Play build is abandoned) on any arm64 Android phone. Then:

$ pkg install proot golang git
$ git clone https://github.com/Airn0x/Cellar   # opens with the beta
$ cd Cellar/engine
$ go build -o cellar . && export PATH="$PATH:$PWD"

That's the whole toolchain. The engine has zero dependencies outside the Go standard library; the binary weighs ~6 MB and also runs on a regular Linux box for development — machines still need proot there; only the image extraction step has a plain-tar fallback.

Your first machine

$ cellar create dev --distro debian
downloading debian trixie (20260724_05:24) ...
downloaded 90.3 MB, sha256 ok
extracting ...
machine "dev" ready (debian trixie)

$ cellar shell dev
root@localhost:~# cat /etc/os-release | head -1
PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie)"

Machines are full distro userlands (alpine, debian, ubuntu) downloaded from the linuxcontainers.org community image server, sha256-verified against the build's manifest, and unpacked into app-private storage. Inside one you are (fake) root: apt and apk work normally.

Agent stacks

Stacks are one-command installs from the catalog, idempotent by design:

$ cellar apply dev claude-code
$ cellar exec dev -e ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-… -- claude -p "hello from my phone"

Secrets travel as environment variables via -e — they are never written into the rootfs and never included in an export. (The app will move this into Android Keystore.)

Daemons & logs

$ cellar start dev -- '/usr/sbin/sshd -D -e'
started "dev" (pid 27428) — logs: cellar logs dev
$ cellar logs dev | tail -5
$ cellar stop dev

The init command is remembered — next time, plain cellar start dev relaunches it. One proot session per running machine keeps the process tree small, which matters: Android's phantom-process killer counts your children. (Field notes covers the whole survival guide.)

CLI reference

cellar create <name> --distro alpine|debian|ubuntu [--release R] [--json]
cellar ls [--json]              # state: stopped · up:PID · broken
cellar shell <name>
cellar exec <name> [-e K=V]... -- <command...>
cellar start <name> [-e K=V]... [-- <init command...>]
cellar stop <name>
cellar logs <name>
cellar rm <name> [--force]      # --force also cleans up broken machines
cellar export <name> [-o file.tar.gz]
cellar apply <machine> <stack>
cellar catalog [--json]
cellar version

Every read command takes --json: the CLI is the API. The Android app, your scripts, and the agents themselves all drive the same surface.

Environment