Sentinelle

Android privacy & digital sovereignty audit — guided, local, zero tracking, zero network.

Sentinelle walks you through your Android phone's settings, step by step, to help you take back control over your personal data: advertising ID, sovereign DNS, voice assistants, OEM diagnostics, app permissions, and more.

The app is autonomous, free, and collects no data. No backend, no account, no funnel to another product. The Android APK has no INTERNET permission and never opens a network connection. Updates to the audit checks ship via Play Store releases.

Version française de ce README : README.fr.md.

Contents

• What it does
• What it is NOT
• Privacy guarantees
• Repository layout
• Requirements
• Build the Android app
• Build the website
• Knowledge base
• Supported devices, languages, countries
• Tech stack
• Contributing
• License
• Further documentation

What it does

1. Detects what can be identified without invasive permissions: Build.MANUFACTURER, Build.MODEL, Build.VERSION.SDK_INT, presence of OEM packages, advertising ID status.
2. Walks the user through a guided, step-by-step audit. For each check:
   • explains the concrete risk,
   • opens the relevant Android Settings screen directly via an Intent,
   • offers a manual fallback path,
   • lets the user mark the check as done.
3. Computes a sovereignty score weighted by severity (critical = 5, important = 3, recommended = 1).

Each check is purely informational plus a one-tap jump into the system Settings. Sentinelle never flips a setting on your behalf.

What it is NOT

• Not a firewall — see NetGuard or TrackerControl.
• Not an APK tracker scanner — see Exodus Privacy.
• Not a VPN.
• Not a paid product.
• Not a lead magnet — Sentinelle is not a front for any other product or service.

Privacy guarantees

• Zero tracking: no analytics, no crash reporting (unless you explicitly opt in, which currently doesn't exist), no Google Play Services beyond what the Android framework itself uses.
• Zero network on the APK: the manifest declares no permissions whatsoever. INTERNET is absent.
• Knowledge base embedded at build time: all audit points, texts and Intents are shipped inside the APK as JSON assets. Updating the checks requires publishing a new release — we accept that cost to keep the app offline.
• Cloud backup disabled (android:allowBackup="false") and data_extraction_rules.xml excludes everything from cloud backup and device-to-device transfer.
• No account, no telemetry, no identifier. The only persistent state is local preferences via DataStore (selected profile + country, checks marked as done).

Repository layout

sentinel/
├── android/                          # Kotlin + Jetpack Compose + Material 3 app
│   ├── app/src/main/kotlin/app/sentinelle/
│   │   ├── data/                     # KB reader, device detector, DataStore repos
│   │   ├── domain/                   # typed models + sovereignty score
│   │   └── ui/                       # Compose screens (onboarding, audit, detail)
│   └── app/src/main/res/             # i18n strings (fr / en / es / de), themes
├── web/                              # Astro static website (public mirror of the KB)
│   └── src/pages/[lang]/             # one tree per supported UI language
├── knowledge-base/                   # source of truth — versioned JSON
│   ├── schema.json                   # JSON Schema for profiles
│   ├── schema-dns.json               # JSON Schema for DNS options
│   └── v1/
│       ├── index.json                # profiles + countries catalog
│       ├── dns/                      # one file per country (fr, de, es, gb, eu)
│       └── profiles/                 # one file per {profileId}.{lang}
├── docs/                             # internal docs (in French)
├── AGENTS.md                         # project rules (in French)
├── README.md                         # this file
└── README.fr.md                      # French version of this README

Requirements

• Android: Android Studio Ladybug+ or standalone Gradle 9.4.1. JDK 21 (as the JVM that runs Gradle). Android SDK (compileSdk 36, build-tools 35+).
• Website: Node.js ≥ 20.

On first clone, create android/local.properties:

sdk.dir=/path/to/Android/Sdk

This file is git-ignored on purpose (machine-specific).

Build the Android app

cd android
JAVA_HOME="/path/to/jdk-21" ./gradlew assembleDebug
./gradlew --stop            # always stop the Gradle daemon afterwards

The debug APK lands in app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk.

Windows note

Use cmd.exe /c ".\gradlew.bat assembleDebug" from Git Bash:

cd /c/dev/projects/sentinel/android
JAVA_HOME="C:\dev\softs\java\jdk-21.0.3+9" cmd.exe //c ".\gradlew.bat assembleDebug"
./gradlew --stop

Versioning

android/version.properties holds versionCode and versionName. Two helper tasks are provided:

./gradlew bumpVersionCode    # increment versionCode by 1
./gradlew bumpVersionName    # bump minor versionName + versionCode

Always bump before producing a release build.

Build the website

cd web
npm install
npm run dev        # local dev server at http://localhost:4321/
npm run build      # static build → dist/
npm run preview    # preview the built site

The site reads the knowledge base directly from ../knowledge-base/v1/ at build time (Node fs), so there's no content duplication. Every supported language gets its own static tree (/fr/..., /en/..., /es/..., /de/...) with prefixDefaultLocale: true.

Knowledge base

All audit content lives under knowledge-base/v1/. It is never hardcoded in Kotlin or TypeScript.

Structure

• index.json — lists available profiles, supported languages per profile, DNS-capable countries, default country.
• profiles/{profileId}.{lang}.json — one file per language, identical structure across languages. Only labels and explanations change; checkId, categoryId, intent.action, autoDetect and dnsOptionsCountryFile stay stable.
• dns/{country}.json — list of sovereign DNS operators recommended for a given country (lowercase ISO 3166-1 alpha-2).

Adding a new profile

1. Create profiles/{new-profile}.fr.json using profiles/android-generic.fr.json as a reference.
2. Declare it in index.json under profiles.
3. Translate into EN / ES / DE by duplicating the file and changing only the user-facing strings.
4. Make sure it validates against schema.json.

Adding a country's DNS options

1. Create dns/{country}.json following schema-dns.json.
2. Add the country code to dnsCountries in index.json.

Adding a language

Translate every profiles/*.json for the new language. Update languages in index.json for each profile, and add the language to the Android resource qualifiers (values-{lang}/) with the UI strings.

Build-time sync (Android)

A Gradle task syncKnowledgeBase copies knowledge-base/v1/**/*.json into android/app/src/main/assets/kb/v1/ before mergeDebugAssets / mergeReleaseAssets. The generated tree is git-ignored.

Supported devices, languages, countries

• Manufacturers: generic Android (Pixel / AOSP), Samsung Galaxy (One UI).
• Android versions: 10 to 15 (API 29 to 35).
• UI languages: French (default / source of truth), English, Spanish, German.
• Countries for local options: France, Germany, Spain, United Kingdom, plus a generic "Europe" profile.

Extensible in all four dimensions — contributions welcome (see below).

Tech stack

Android

• Kotlin 2.3.20, Jetpack Compose + Material 3, AGP 9.0.1, Gradle 9.4.1.
• minSdk 29, targetSdk 35, compileSdk 36, JDK target 17.
• Dependencies: kotlinx.serialization, navigation-compose, datastore-preferences.
• No network library (no OkHttp, no Retrofit). No DI framework.

Website

• Astro 5 with four language trees (fr / en / es / de), prefixDefaultLocale: true.
• Zero JavaScript on the client. Pure static HTML.
• Mobile-first, dark theme, no external CDN.

Contributing

The simplest, most impactful contributions:

• Translate a profile into an additional UI language.
• Add a country's DNS options — especially if you know good local sovereign resolvers.
• Add a new profile for another OEM (Xiaomi / MIUI, Oppo / ColorOS, Motorola, etc.).
• Correct a settings path that drifted between Android versions.

Please keep:

• checkId, categoryId, intent.action, autoDetect and dnsOptionsCountryFile stable across translations.
• Commits in French (see AGENTS.md).
• No new dependency without a clear justification — the app must stay network-free and small.

Issue templates and a CONTRIBUTING.md may appear later.

License

TBD. No license file is committed yet, which means default copyright applies (all rights reserved). A permissive license (likely MIT or Apache-2.0) will be added before any external contribution is merged. If you have a preference, open an issue.

Further documentation

• AGENTS.md — absolute rules, project description, architecture (French).
• docs/tickets.md — backlog and progress (French).
• docs/prompt-demarrage.md — bootstrap prompt for new contributor / agent sessions (French).
• knowledge-base/schema.json and schema-dns.json — JSON Schema definitions.