item/grid

item/grid looks after a connected Surface Duo from a Linux computer, in the spirit of a desktop's page for a connected phone: it sees what the phone is doing, installs and updates item and the port, reads the phone's logs, takes screenshots, backs the phone up and - by the safety rules learned on this device, as code - RAM-boots and writes images to it, installs the whole system from a release image, and takes the phone back to stock Android and to Linux again - through a recovery of its own, its steps on the phone's screen. A phone it installs comes up already on the computer's Wi-Fi, in its time zone. The command is itemgrid; the window is item/grid. The release images (item-duo1-… in item's releases: the image, the kernel, the recovery, a manifest) go in ~/.local/share/itemgrid/releases/<name>/.

Until 1.0, item/grid is an experiment, as item is. It writes to the phone's partitions, so the rules below are checks in its core that cannot be gone around, not notes to remember - but it has been used on one phone, the owner's, from one Linux computer. Keep your own backups of boot_a, boot_b and misc before you let it write anything.

What it does

itemgrid --help is the list; the main ones:

status	what the phone is doing; on Linux the versions of item and the port, the battery, heat, free space, uptime, failed services
update	build item, install it, reboot, wait until it runs (--no-build: install what is built)
logs	the phone's journal: a boot, a unit, a pattern, since a time; saved to a file for a ticket
run, shell	a command (sent as a script) or a shell on the phone, as root or as its owner; the dangerous ones refused
screenshot	both panels as one PNG, through item's live mirror of the screen
backup	device data (once), the boot chain, home and settings; full: the whole system from TWRP
slots, confirm, ramboot	the two boot slots and their state; a boot image tried from RAM first, by the rules
install	erase and install item from a release image (--keep-files keeps home, Wi-Fi, the time zone, the PIN)
stock, android	Microsoft's packages and their boot chain; the way to stock Android and back
keys	the phone's keyring from the computer: set NAME (from stdin), set-all FILE, list, forget NAME - item/grid keeps no copy
wifi	the Wi-Fi this computer is on, its time zone and the zone's city for the weather, given to the phone (the password never shown)

The window shows the Duo drawn as it is held - the hinge and the gravity from the phone's sensors, its screen live from item's mirror - on a table of light, and a few lines on how it is: item's version, the battery, the link. The menu is lines drawn on the same table: keys (the phone's keyring), updates (item's version and build; the update), stock (the way back to the phone's Android); Developer Mode adds one with the slots, images from RAM, every kind of backup and the logs. The table's look is in the word itself: three of its cubes turn the grid's colour, strength and width round on a click, and its / turns item/grid into edge/lit, where they turn the rim and the light. What is not on the table yet is the command line's.

item-recovery (crates/recovery) takes TWRP's place: the port's kernel with a static Rust init and adb daemon, busybox and mke2fs, 19 MB. item/grid RAM-boots it, never writes it; its screen on both panels is the table's grid - the colour, strength and width the window has - with the step at work, its progress and the phone's item id. It comes with the system image; tools/build-recovery.sh builds it here.

The window: the Duo as it is held, its screen live from item's mirror; beside it its item id, item's version, the battery, the cable.	The menu, drawn on the table as the rest; the phone put away under it.

itemgrid status, the same phone:

Phone:     Linux (172.16.42.1)
System:    Droidian 102 (2026-10-21), kernel 4.14-190-perf-microsoft-surfaceduo, up 0 h 19 min
item:      0.3.0 (built 2026-10-25 20:08), running
Port:      0.22.0, sensorfw 0.14.8+itemae3
Fingers:   1 enrolled
Battery:   100%, discharging, 26 °C
CPU:       32 °C
Disk /         79.4 GB free of 89.3 GB
Disk /userdata 9.9 GB free of 101.9 GB

The safety rules, as code

Learned on the device; each is a check in crates/core, not a thing to remember.

• Writing to the phone: RAM boot first and always; one change per boot; a backup before any write; never in one click. An image is written to a slot only once it booted Linux from RAM on that phone.
• Never read /sys/kernel/debug/gpio on the Duo: it resets the phone at once. Such commands are refused, as is writing block devices through run.
• Updates go through a reboot: restarting the vendor hwcomposer resets the phone about one time in three.
• Commands are sent as a script file. A pkill -f pattern sent inline over ssh matches its own shell and kills it.
• The owner's settings, keys and system are left as they were.

How it is built

Rust, GTK4 and libadwaita.

crates/core	itemgrid-core: what the phone is doing, every action and every safety rule; the command line and the window only show what is here
crates/cli	itemgrid, the command line over the core
crates/gui	itemgrid-gui, the window: the table, the phone drawn as it is held, the night and day
crates/motion	duo-motion, run on the phone over ssh while the window follows it: the hinge, the lid and the gravity from sensorfw
crates/mcp	itemgrid-mcp, an MCP server that lets Claude Code look at the window and try it with a real pointer, on a screen of its own
crates/recovery	item-recovery, the recovery item/grid RAM-boots: PID 1, the adb daemon, the screen on both panels (DRM)
crates/install	itemgrid-install, the installer for a computer without item/grid - Windows first: item on a Duo from stock Android, in one go, with adb, fastboot and the USB alone (no ssh); the release and the tools fetched by itself
tools/	package-deb.sh, install-local.sh, fetch-fonts.sh, package-windows.sh, build-recovery.sh

The phone is reached over ssh on the USB link (172.16.42.1), or over Wi-Fi once the cable has shown its key; fastboot and item-recovery (adb) for the modes where Linux is not running. The installer alone does without ssh: it knows Linux came up by the phone's USB network gadget, and writes the boot chain from TWRP after the owner's forced restart (the parking brake parks it in fastboot) - the same rules, one more step by hand.

cargo build --release
install -Dm755 target/release/itemgrid     ~/.local/bin/itemgrid
install -Dm755 target/release/itemgrid-gui ~/.local/bin/itemgrid-gui

The installer for Windows is cross-built here (apt install mingw-w64, rustup target add x86_64-pc-windows-gnu): tools/package-windows.sh leaves target/windows/itemgrid-install-<version>-windows.zip. cargo build -p itemgrid-install builds it for this computer too (--fetch-only brings the image here and stops).

License

MIT, see LICENSE.