Empowering smart app development with SolidGPT: an edge-cloud hybrid AI agent framework
Liao Hu, Qiteng Wu, Ruoyu Qi
TL;DR
The paper tackles the tension between semantic understanding, developer productivity, and data privacy in LLM-assisted app development. It introduces SolidGPT, an edge–cloud hybrid developer assistant with MDP-based routing, MVVM-aware integration, and a context-preserving prompt pipeline to enable semantic code search and workflow automation while keeping data local. Through a 12-week Android deployment with 43 developers, SolidGPT delivered faster bug resolution, reduced cloud API usage, and high crash-diagnosis accuracy, demonstrating the viability of privacy-preserving, context-rich AI on mobile. The work highlights the value of hybrid architectures, human-in-the-loop collaboration, and platform-aware design for practical AI-powered development tools.
Abstract
The integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) into mobile and software development workflows faces a persistent tension among three demands: semantic awareness, developer productivity, and data privacy. Traditional cloud-based tools offer strong reasoning but risk data exposure and latency, while on-device solutions lack full-context understanding across codebase and developer tooling. We introduce SolidGPT, an open-source, edge-cloud hybrid developer assistant built on GitHub, designed to enhance code and workspace semantic search. SolidGPT enables developers to: talk to your codebase: interactively query code and project structure, discovering the right methods and modules without manual searching. Automate software project workflows: generate PRDs, task breakdowns, Kanban boards, and even scaffold web app beginnings, with deep integration via VSCode and Notion. Configure private, extensible agents: onboard private code folders (up to approximately 500 files), connect Notion, customize AI agent personas via embedding and in-context training, and deploy via Docker, CLI, or VSCode extension. In practice, SolidGPT empowers developer productivity through: Semantic-rich code navigation: no more hunting through files or wondering where a feature lives. Integrated documentation and task management: seamlessly sync generated PRD content and task boards into developer workflows. Privacy-first design: running locally via Docker or VSCode, with full control over code and data, while optionally reaching out to LLM APIs as needed. By combining interactive code querying, automated project scaffolding, and human-AI collaboration, SolidGPT provides a practical, privacy-respecting edge assistant that accelerates real-world development workflows, ideal for intelligent mobile and software engineering contexts.