GSoC 2026 Applicant – AI Mentor for PocketCode | Contributions & Proposal

[Narisetti Chaitanya naidu]

Hi everyone,

I'm Chaitanya, a third-year CS student from JNTUK Kakinada, India. I'm applying for GSoC 2026 with the "AI Mentor for PocketCode" idea and wanted to introduce myself to the community.

Over the past few weeks I've been contributing to the catrobat-ai-tutor SDK. My recent PR (#12) adds two major things:

1. In-app Gemini API chat — a direct API path so users can get AI responses without leaving PocketCode, using ktor-client (KMP compatible). Previously the SDK only supported handing off prompts to an externally installed AI app; this adds a first-party alternative.

2. BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) key management — secure on-device key storage via EncryptedSharedPreferences, with a first-time setup flow and a Change Key option. The key is validated before storage and injected into GeminiApiRepository at runtime — never hardcoded.

The existing external app launch flow is completely untouched. The architecture is also designed to support additional providers (OpenAI, Claude) in future iterations, which aligns with my proposal's multi-model direction.

Demo (screen recording): https://drive.google.com/file/d/17x03i_X5ii7Lp46KHwuLh2qpQBisfrV1/view?usp=sharing
Fork: github.com/Karna14314/catrobat-ai-tutor | Branch: feature/in-app-gemini-chat

Would love any feedback from the community or mentors on the direction. Happy to share my proposal doc as well.

Thanks!
Chaitanya