English | 简体中文

Chat Buddy iOS

Status: Active Development — primary development version of Chat Buddy. The web application is in maintenance mode and serves as the migration source for existing user data.

✨ Key Features

• 👯‍♂️ Multi-Persona Group Chats: Mix and match multiple AI personas in a single conversation. The engine natively routes messages and handles staggered, independent AI responses to simulate real human group dynamics.
• ⚡️ ReAct Tool Execution Engine: A built-in reasoning and acting pipeline allows specialized "Task Agent" personas to fetch real-time data seamlessly through tools (e.g., integrating the free DuckDuckGo Instant Answer API) without requiring complex backend server function calling.
• 🌌 Immersive Dynamic Backgrounds: High-performance, battery-efficient animated wallpapers. It leverages SwiftUI Canvas for lightweight fluid effects (like drifting Auroras) and falls back to SpriteKit-powered particle systems (SKEmitterNode) for complex elements like Snow, Rain, Fire, and Starfields.
• ⏱️ Moments Background Orchestration: Deep integration with the iOS BackgroundTasks framework (BGAppRefreshTask & BGProcessingTask). Your AI companions will naturally and autonomously generate updates, celebrate birthdays, and post holiday greetings to their "Moments" feed even while the app is completely backgrounded.
• 🎨 Premium Native UI/UX: Built with a rigorous design system featuring glassmorphism elements, dynamic accent colors, smooth SwiftUI transitions, and robust bilingual (English/Chinese) localization support.

🗺 Roadmap

• MVP stabilization (current): Keep the Web → iOS data schema compatible, expand core chat/storage tests, and validate background tasks on physical devices.
• Internal beta: Complete migration testing and collect crash/performance feedback from a small device matrix.
• TestFlight: Ship a signed beta with release notes, privacy disclosures, and a repeatable archive process.
• App Store: Complete review assets, support documentation, and production monitoring before public release.

Background refresh is opportunistic: iOS decides when BackgroundTasks run, so the app does not promise execution at an exact time. API keys are stored in Keychain rather than plain-text UserDefaults.

🛠 Tech Stack

• UI Framework: SwiftUI
• State Model: @Observable + Environment injection
• Core Engine: Swift Concurrency (actor, async/await)
• Background Processes: iOS BackgroundTasks (BGAppRefreshTask, BGProcessingTask)
• Visual Effects: SwiftUI Canvas + SpriteKit
• Data Persistence: StorageService (UserDefaults) + JSON export/import backup

📦 How to Build

1. Clone the repository.
2. Open Chat_Buddy_iOS.xcodeproj in Xcode (requires Xcode 26.2+).
3. The project uses standard iOS frameworks and requires no complex third-party setup.
4. Set your run destination and hit Cmd + R.

Pull requests are also built and unit-tested on GitHub Actions using the macOS 26 runner and Xcode 26.5.

Terminal Build & Test

# Build
xcodebuild -project Chat_Buddy_iOS.xcodeproj \
  -scheme Chat_Buddy_iOS \
  -destination 'platform=iOS Simulator,name=iPhone 17 Pro' \
  build

# Test
xcodebuild -project Chat_Buddy_iOS.xcodeproj \
  -scheme Chat_Buddy_iOS \
  -destination 'platform=iOS Simulator,name=iPhone 17 Pro' \
  test

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

You are completely free to use, modify, distribute, or incorporate this code into your own commercial or open-source projects. We only ask that you retain the original copyright notice.

---

This application pushes the boundaries of localized AI chat architectures into full native device orchestration, delivering a deeply personal virtual companionship platform.