The journey
RikkeTik had been pushing the boundaries of autonomous AI development and still had not found its limits. So QonQrete, his autonomous AI system, got an ambitious one-shot challenge: build a completely new Linux-based smartphone operating system without Android.
QonQrete generated the initial OS scaffolding in roughly 48 hours from a single comprehensive prompt. That was the starting point, not the finished product. Since then RikkeTik has spent weeks refining the architecture, expanding device compatibility, integrating functionality, and preparing firmware.
Nuxel is inspired by GrapheneOS's security philosophy but built on a pure Linux foundation without Android/AOSP dependencies. It is experimental, publicly available, and open source — and it is honest about which parts are proven and which are still targets.
One open question is genuinely interesting: how Android-specific root detection and integrity checks behave on a completely non-Android OS. That is still unconfirmed.
Nuxel is maintained by RikkeTik (opens in a new tab) . Nuxel is not a team product: it is one maintainer's project, built in the open.
The end goal
Replacing Android on a primary phone with an experimental OS would be reckless. So two expendable devices go first — and they are allowed to break, bootloop, or need a complete reflash.
RikkeTik asked QonQrete, his autonomous AI system, to build a completely new Linux-based smartphone OS without Android.
QonQrete generated the first OS scaffolding from a single comprehensive prompt: a pure Linux foundation with no AOSP dependencies.
RikkeTik refined the architecture, expanded device compatibility, integrated functionality, and prepared firmware.
Nuxel ran successfully in a virtual machine, with flashable builds prepared for both expendable test phones.
The Galaxy S10+ reached a real Fedora userspace and now runs the launcher, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, audio playback and the tri-link consoles. Later releases fixed the ABOX boot panic and rebuilt the UI reliability path.
The final target is replacing Android on RikkeTik’s daily-driver Pixel 10 Pro XL once Nuxel is stable and functional. That bring-up is hardware-gated and has not started on the device.
Current status
v0.7.2-beta is a working foundation on one device, not a finished daily driver. The Motorola and the Pixel are not Nuxel systems yet; this page and the device pages say so plainly.
Under the hood
44
Features catalogued
22
Shipped
15
In progress
7
Blocked / planned
Release engineering
Nuxel treats every claim as something to prove. The system is tested in tiers, the immutable design is meant to recover from failure, and the documentation records what each tier actually established.
L1–L3 run offline in the repository. L4–L6 run against the VM, the live phone and the owner, and are recorded as evidence rather than inferred.
The update design is that a failed update rolls back instead of stranding the phone.
What comes next
v0.7.2-beta is a working foundation, not a finished daily driver. The roadmap ahead is ambitious.
This is not just about building another mobile OS. It is about discovering how far autonomous AI engineering can go when challenged with complex, multidisciplinary software development. The initial foundation took two days; turning it into a secure, reliable, daily-driver OS is the real challenge. These are future targets, not delivery guarantees.
target Next milestone
Close the remaining S10+ hardware paths and promote owner acceptance results.
target 2027 Q1
The daily-driver target: a complete phone on the Pixel 10 Pro XL.
target 2027+ Q4
The assistant and fleet phase: PenGuru, self-healing and more devices.
By the numbers
Nuxel is maintained by RikkeTik and developed in the open. Read the code, report issues, or contribute a fix — every decision is visible on GitHub.