1.2 KiB
1.2 KiB
Android Engine Feasibility — Findings
Companion to 2026-06-27-android-engine-feasibility-research.md.
Each section ends with a verdict: proven / risky / unsolved.
Q1 — yt-dlp on Android
Verdict: RISKY. yt-dlp runs on-device in shipping apps (Seal, YTDLnis,
SealPlus) — proven. But Catacomb's specific need is the asterisk: curl_cffi
TLS impersonation is documented broken on Android (yt-dlp #15505 Jan 2026;
#14106 aarch64 Linux), and impersonation is the exact reason Catacomb pins
nightly yt-dlp. The yt-dlp binary update story is good — youtubedl-android
(yausername) exposes UpdateChannel.NIGHTLY to pull fresh builds post-install,
no app-store release, across all four ABIs. Chaquopy is ruled out: no runtime
update path.
- Recommended mechanism: youtubedl-android (only approach with runtime nightly updates + production proof).
- Risk carried forward: the anti-bot layer (impersonation + the Deno-based bgutil POT loopback, which has no Android port) needs a rethink — feeds Q2/Q3.
- Full evidence + sources:
q1-yt-dlp-android-report.md.
Q2 — JS runtime (deno's job)
pending
Q3 — POT / Proof-of-Origin
pending
Q4 — Rust core via JNI
pending
Synthesis — go / no-go
pending