[Proposal] Standardized Framework for Automated Android Toolchain and Dependency Upgrades

[Aayush-Sarikhada]

Upgrading an Android project’s toolchain (AGP, Gradle, Kotlin, JDK) and dependencies is honestly a pain.

Major upgrades (like AGP 8 → 9 or Kotlin changes) usually bring:

• Breaking DSL changes
• Dependency conflicts
• Random build failures

Current tools help with version bumps, but they don’t really solve the full problem. Especially when it comes to:

• Resolving circular or conflicting dependency trees
• Migrating deprecated Gradle DSL to newer formats
• Verifying the build and fixing errors after upgrade

Most of the time it turns into trial-and-error.

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What I’m Trying to Build

I’m exploring the idea of creating a standardized system of “skills” + an agent that can automate the entire upgrade process.

Basically:

Move from manual trial-and-error → to a more deterministic, guided workflow

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What It Should Be Able To Do

• Intelligent Mapping
  Figure out the most stable combo of AGP, Gradle, Kotlin, and Java for a given project

• Structural Migration
  Automatically update build files when DSL changes (plugins, configs, etc.)

• Conflict Resolution
  Detect and fix dependency version mismatches using recommended versions

• Automated Verification
  Run builds, lint, tests, and ensure everything is actually working post-upgrade

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Right now, knowledge about upgrades is:

• scattered (docs, issues, StackOverflow)
• inconsistent
• not easily reusable

The idea is to turn that into a single, reusable “knowledge layer” (skills) that tools or agents can use.

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Would really appreciate any thoughts — even critical ones 👍