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A dead-simple showcase of deploying to nowrun. The demo folder ships with a real Android app — the open-source 2048 game (MIT licensed) — so you just create the app and deploy the bundled APK. nowrun streams it at a URL anyone can open in a browser, no install.

Get the demo folder

Contains 2048.apk (official v1.3.3 build, MIT), this guide, and license attribution.

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Prerequisites

The nowrun CLI, installed and connected:
No Android SDK, no build step, no download — the APK is already in the folder.

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Deploy it — 3 steps

  • --bind writes the new app’s game_id to nowrun.json, so later commands don’t need -a.
  • -av / -vc are just labels on the deploy.
  • Step 2 returns a submission id; pass it to step 3.
  • Deploys are async: status shows progress while the cloud build runs, then success with a play URL. Open it in any browser — the app is running in the cloud and streaming to you. Share the link with anyone.

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For an AI agent

Run top to bottom. Add --json to any command for machine-readable output.
How to drive it:
  • With --json, each command prints {"ok": true, "data": {…}}. Read the submission_id from deploy’s data, and the play URL from status’s data once job_status is success.
  • Poll status every ~15–30s; job_status: progress means the build is still running — keep polling, don’t re-deploy.
  • Unsure about a flag? Ask the CLI: nowrun help --json and nowrun <command> -h.

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Deploy a different app

Any APK works. Grab one from an open-source project’s releases, then create + deploy with that app’s details:
Permissively-licensed open-source apps with APKs on their GitHub releases: Most F-Droid games are GPL; if you’re okay with copyleft there’s a much wider selection — download the APK from the releases page or F-Droid and deploy it with step 2 above.

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Troubleshooting

  • Not logged in — run nowrun init -t <token> (get the token from nowrun.io).
  • Deploy rejected / something missing — run nowrun validate and fix what it flags.
  • status stays on progress — that’s the cloud build running; keep polling.

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License

The bundled 2048.apk is the unmodified official build of the open-source 2048 Android game by Jerry Jiang (tpcstld) and contributors, redistributed under the MIT License. No affiliation with or endorsement by the project is implied.