{"id":2273,"date":"2026-03-10T08:17:26","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T16:17:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yoonhuh.com\/blog\/?p=2273"},"modified":"2026-03-12T09:53:47","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T17:53:47","slug":"modernizing-a-10-year-old-android-app-with-agentic-ai-cursor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yoonhuh.com\/blog\/modernizing-a-10-year-old-android-app-with-agentic-ai-cursor\/","title":{"rendered":"Modernizing a 10-Year-Old Android App with Agentic AI (Cursor)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past weekend, I updated Go There Now<\/strong> with the goal of bringing this outdated 2015-era Android app<\/strong> up to basic 2026 Android development standards<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Originally written and maintained by me as a personal Android project, Go There Now<\/strong> had not received any updates since October 2015<\/strong>. The app was written entirely in Java<\/strong> and relied on several libraries and frameworks that have since been deprecated or replaced.<\/p>\n

My objective was to modernize the project to support Android 16<\/strong>, update the architecture to use modern Jetpack libraries<\/strong>, add Wear OS support<\/strong>, and migrate the UI to Material 3 Expressive<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

To help guide the modernization effort, I leveraged Cursor<\/strong>, an agentic AI coding tool<\/strong>, to assist with planning and implementing the migration.<\/p>\n

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Key Takeaways<\/strong><\/h1>\n
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  • \n

    A 10-year-old Android codebase<\/strong> was modernized to 2026 Android standards<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  • \n

    The migration was completed in about three hours<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  • \n

    Cursor AI<\/strong> helped automate large portions of the refactoring process<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  • \n

    Human validation was still required for Gradle builds, runtime testing, and UI validation<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  • \n

    Legacy frameworks such as ButterKnife<\/strong>, Picasso<\/strong>, and Android Wear<\/strong> were replaced with modern alternatives<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    \n

    Migration Strategy Using Cursor<\/strong><\/h1>\n

    Before making any code changes, I asked Cursor<\/strong> to generate a migration plan<\/strong> outlining the modernization process.<\/p>\n

    The goal was to perform the migration in incremental phases<\/strong>, allowing the application to be validated after each stage.<\/p>\n

    For this process, I relied on Cursor\u2019s Composer 1.5 model<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

    The migration plan was divided into the following phases:<\/p>\n

    Phase 1:<\/strong> Build System & SDK Updates
    Phase 2:<\/strong> AndroidX Migration<\/strong>
    Phase 3:<\/strong> Image Loading Migration \u2014 Glide & Picasso \u2192 Coil<\/strong>
    Phase 4:<\/strong> ButterKnife \u2192 ViewBinding<\/strong>
    Phase 5:<\/strong> Kotlin & Jetpack Compose Support<\/strong>
    Phase 6:<\/strong> Android Wear \u2192 Wear OS<\/strong>
    Phase 7:<\/strong> Wear OS Data Layer API Migration<\/strong>
    Phase 8:<\/strong> Material Design 1 \u2192 Material 3 Expressive<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Here’s a portion of what Cursor generated prior to executing the migration plan:<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

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    Development Workflow with Cursor<\/strong><\/h1>\n

    For each migration phase, I compiled the project to ensure there were no major regressions or build failures<\/strong>. Many times the project initially failed to compile. In those cases, I provided Cursor with the Gradle build logs<\/strong>, allowing it to diagnose and fix the errors.<\/p>\n

    Other issues surfaced during runtime testing:<\/p>\n