Caek: an experiment in modular situational computation

Caek is an experiment that aims to make mobile computers such as phones and tablets feel smarter to their users by trying to understand input and provide appropriate actions. It is built to be extended by developing and installing third-party modules that can specialize in contexts such as social networks or ubiquitous capture.

The current functionality is similar to the experience of Just Type, but I hope to expand it to be a bit more powerful (see Modules, below).

Modules

Modules are independently packaged services that you can install to extend Caek. They respond to content queries such as text, images (coming soon), and videos (also coming soon) with actions that are (hopefully) appropriate to what you are trying to do.

There are only a few modules that come packaged with Caek. They are extremely basic and not very smart at all, but they should provide minimum viable functionality.

• Launcher: matches text with the names of installed apps.
• Contacts: matches text with contacts in your device.
• Email: recognizes email addresses.
• Phone: recognizes phone numbers.
• Search: provides an action for performing a search.
• Browser: recognizes URIs.

Modules are disabled by default. You must enable modules before they will become active, because (1) Caek currently has no way of knowing when you install a new module, and (2) because modules enabling themselves opens you up to all sorts of unscrupulous spying code being run without your knowledge (note to developers: don't spy on people; that's evil).

To enable modules, start Caek and select "Manage modules" from the overflow menu in the action bar. Scroll down to the module that you want to enable and toggle the switch to "ON", then press Back or the Up affordance to return to Caek. The module should start receiving your input immediately after you enable it.

Building and installing Caek

Caek can be built with just the Android SDK, for API level 18. Caek requires a minimum API level of 14 because I don't want to deal with compatibility issues right now.

git clone https://github.com/ayshen/caek
cd caek
android update project --path .
ant clean && ant debug

Developing modules

Modules are simple subclasses of Service. To make your own module (we'll call it MyModule), you should follow the format shown here:

// Module is a class in this project.
// IModule is an AIDL interface in this project; IModule.Stub is
// automatically generated by AIDL as part of building the project.
public class MyModule extends Module
{
    @Override
    public android.os.IBinder createBinder()
    {
        return new IModule.Stub()
        {
            public java.util.List<android.content.Intent> process(
                    android.content.Intent data)
            {
                // ...
                // Make sure you return a List! If you decline to respond,
                // return an empty List instead!
            }
        };
    }
}

Remember to declare your module as a service in your application, as shown below. You don't have to write a standalone application for your module; you can just bundle the module into your existing application if you want to add support for Caek.

NB. You should supply a label for your module. If you do, it MUST be a reference to a string resource in your package. The label is displayed when users manage which modules are enabled.

<service android:name=".MyModule"
         android:label="@string/my_module_label"
         android:permission="com.example.aperture.core.BIND_MODULES">
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="com.example.aperture.core.ACTION_BIND_MODULE"
        />
    </intent-filter>
</service>

Content queries are given to your module as extras in the Intent data.

• Text queries are Strings under the key Module.QUERY_TEXT.
• Audio queries are not yet implemented.
• Image queries are not yet implemented.
• Video queries are not yet implemented.

Your module is expected to return a List of Intent objects, each of which should be ready to be passed without modification into Context.startActivity(). Each response Intent will be displayed as a short text item and (coming soon) a small (48dp square or smaller) icon.

• The label should be attached to the Intent as a String extra under the key Module.RESPONSE_TEXT.
• The icon should be attached as a Bitmap under the key Module.RESPONSE_THUMBNAIL. It isn't used right now, but it may show up in a future commit.

Your module is also a Service, so you can do anything that a service can do, such as writing to your SharedPreferences, performing file I/O, reading the hardware sensors, etc. This should make it easy to implement things like context-awareness and interaction history.

Why "Caek"?

Using modules to build an AI reminded me of GLaDOS from Portal (hence the package name for this project). The intelligence modules that attach to Caek sort of act like the Aperture Science Artificial Personality Constructs, one of which (the "Cake Core") is preoccupied with cake.