As AI shifts from passive assistants to on-device autonomous agents, mobile software is undergoing its most significant platform transition in decades. Android is evolving from a visual app launcher into an intelligent runtime where system-level agents orchestrate multi-step workflows across applications. In this opening keynote panel followed by open QnA, engineering and developer advocacy leaders from Google unpack how the platform is adapting to an agent-first world. The panel examines the shift toward AppFunctions and on-device tool calling, privacy boundaries for autonomous execution, and why developers must start treating app capabilities as structured APIs alongside visual screens. Developers will walk away with an insider look at Android’s platform roadmap and practical guidance on preparing production codebases for an agent-driven ecosystem.

Building Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines directly inside Android apps sounds like the ultimate privacy and offline-first solution. However, running local LLMs, embeddings, and vector databases on commercial mobile devices quickly runs into a wall of hard hardware constraints - including severe memory limits, high latency, aggressive battery draining, and data freshness challenges. Instead of showing polished marketing demos or cloud-centric architectures, this circle discussion is a reality check on native mobile AI. Let's talk about practical experiences regarding what happens when a local model like Gemma chokes device memory, how to handle vector searches without destroying the user experience, and where developers draw a strict line between on-device processing and cloud handoffs.

NFC can turn an ordinary Android interaction into a simple “tap and go” experience—but building NFC-powered applications that are maintainable, testable, and ready for modern Android architecture is a different challenge. In this session, we will build an NFC-driven Android experience using Jetpack Compose and Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP), exploring how platform-specific NFC capabilities can be cleanly separated from shared application logic. Attendees will learn how to move beyond basic NFC tag reading and design an architecture that can support real-world NFC products and experiences. We will cover: 1. How Android's NFC stack works and how to integrate it cleanly with a Compose application 2. Designing an NFC abstraction that keeps platform-specific code isolated using KMP 3. Managing NFC state, lifecycle, permissions, and asynchronous events in a Compose-first architecture 4. Designing reliable NFC flows for reading, writing, validation, and error handling 5. Testing and structuring NFC functionality so that the application remains maintainable as it grows The goal is to leave attendees with a practical architecture they can adapt to their own NFC-enabled Android and KMP projects.