And Now I’ve Vibe Coded a Native Android Markdown App ⭐

Emboldened by Google's AI Studio announcements at Google I/O on Tuesday, I created a Markdown editor. A web app-based Markdown editor, as it turns out, though my original goal was to create a native Android app, as per the announcement. Regardless, the quality of the resulting app is impressive, and the speed at which it came together is breathtaking.

But, again, I meant to create an Android app. I'd just started experimenting again with Kotlin and Jetpack Compose, now the preferred method for creating new Android apps. And so I was curious about building something quickly with Google AI Studio and then exporting that project to Android Studio so I could work on the app code in a more traditional manner.

But as I wrote at the time, it wasn't clear when this happened whether I was simply missing something (always a possibility) or whether this new AI Studio feature, the ability to create native Android apps, was just not available immediately (also a possibility). And so last night, after returning home from dinner and zoning out in front of the TV like a good American for a bit, my mind wandered, and I opened a laptop and revisited Google AI Studio.

When what to my wondering eyes should appear but a new button, "Build an Android app." Oh dear.

So I went back to the well, what the heck. Starting with the following prompt:
I would like a native Android desktop app that looks and works like the Markdown editor app Typora. It should include the ability to open and save files, use a WYSIWYG editing view by default, and support all the normal keyboard shortcuts as per a word processor. The design should be minimalist, with no sidebar. It's just an editor, not a file manager.
This time, Gemini 3.5 Flash ran for quite a while--542 seconds, or almost 10 minutes--during which it kept me up-to-date on how busy it was before providing a nice report about what it had accomplished.

Looking over this lengthy report, I saw one thing I didn't want, it had assigned the Ctrl + K keyboard shortcut to "Monospace code wrapper" and not "Insert hyperlink" as I prefer. And so I prompted it with this:
It also needs a way to add hyperlinks, and with the Ctrl + k keyboard shortcut
And, thanks to a pop-up suggestion during this process, with this (which Gemini wrote for me):
Add a theme customization feature to the Typora-like Markdown editor. Include a few pre-built minimalist themes (e.g., light, dark, sepia). Also, provide the functionality for users to define their own custom themes by selecting colors for background, text, headings, and links. Ensure themes are easily switchable.
These changes took 219 and 292 seconds, respectively, and I got a second lengthy report describing what it had done. It concluded with, "Both features have been compiled, optimized, and verified with zero errors, keeping the interface minimalist, focused, and distraction-free!"

Ignoring that exclamation point, I watched as Google AI Studio spun up an Android...