Kutup mobile development (iOS / Android)

Status: work in progress; the native mobile apps are not release-ready.

Kutup’s intended iOS and Android product apps are developed in the sibling kutup-ios and kutup-android repositories. They use native Swift/Kotlin presentation and platform security while consuming shared Rust Chat logic from this repository through UniFFI. This repository does not build, test, sign, or publish complete native mobile applications by itself.

The Tauri shell under src-tauri/ still has compilable mobile entry points and convenience scripts. Treat those targets as an experimental shared-web-shell path, not evidence that the dedicated native apps have reached feature parity or release readiness.

What is ready in this repository

• crates/kutup-chat-core owns the shared libsignal/OpenMLS engine used by web WASM and native integrations.
• crates/kutup-client-ffi exposes the current Swift/Kotlin UniFFI boundary.
• scripts/generate-native-bindings.sh generates Swift and Kotlin bindings from the compiled library metadata.
• The responsive web application includes mobile layouts, but browser mobile UI and dedicated native apps are different delivery surfaces.
• src-tauri/ can still initialize experimental iOS/Android wrapper projects.

The current FFI API is the phase-2b Direct Chat engine boundary documented in chat-native-bindings.md. Native integration, packaging, platform lifecycle, MLS/media/backup parity, store signing, and device-level acceptance remain work in progress in the mobile repositories.

Generate the native Chat bindings

Generation requires Rust 1.91.1 or newer and protoc. On Linux or macOS:

scripts/generate-native-bindings.sh /tmp/kutup-native-bindings

The output contains Swift source/header/modulemap files and Kotlin source. It is a build artifact and is not committed here. Packaging those artifacts as an XCFramework/Swift package or Android AAR is owned by the corresponding mobile repository; see chat-native-bindings.md for the threading, SQLCipher, Keychain/Keystore, and backup-exclusion requirements.

Experimental Tauri-mobile path

These commands exercise the retained Tauri wrapper, not the dedicated native product apps:

pnpm install
pnpm tauri:ios:init       # macOS + Xcode required
pnpm tauri:ios:dev

pnpm tauri:android:init   # Android SDK + NDK required
pnpm tauri:android:dev

src-tauri/gen/ is gitignored because the generated Xcode/Gradle projects contain host paths and signing configuration. The scripts regenerate icons from src-tauri/icons/source.png after initialization.

Known Tauri-mobile limitations include no Android keyring backend, no supported mobile plaintext-export/share-sheet flow, no Office editor assets in the embedded bundle, and no mobile release CI. These limitations do not define the architecture of the dedicated native apps, but they mean the wrapper is not a release candidate either.

Server requirement

Every mobile client connects to a Kutup homeserver over HTTPS. A physical device must trust the server certificate; the local self-signed Compose certificate is not suitable unless its CA is deliberately installed on the device. Use a publicly trusted certificate for normal development and all release testing.

The product-wide application identifier is dev.kutup.client. Platform signing, entitlements, backup exclusions, Keychain/Keystore access, notification permissions, and store metadata must be finalized and verified in the native repositories before either app is described as ready.