The app store for robots has arrived: Hugging Face launches open-source Reachy Mini App Store with 200+ apps

While Large Language Models (LLMs) have mastered general-purpose coding by training on massive repositories like Microsoft's GitHub, the volume of code specific to robotics remains "tiny" by comparison (though Github does contain likely the largest existent, publicly accessible library of robotics code to date, with more than 17,000 different repositories or "repos" dedicated to the field).

This lack of data has meant that, until now, AI agents were relatively poor at understanding the physical abstractions and firmware requirements of hardware. The new Hugging Face Reachy Mini App Store already hosts a library of over 200 community-built applications, and Reachy Mini owners will be able to download any of these free of charge to start (unlike smartphone apps, there's no monetization option for app creators on this store — yet).

The Reachy Mini App Store will also offer Reachy Mini owners — around 10,000 units have been sold so far since last year — an easy means of building their own custom apps for the tiny, stationary desktop robot with built-in camera eyes, speaker, and microphone, via Hugging Face's existing, AI-powered agent called "ML Intern." Other community-driven applications include:

Emotional Damage Chess: A robot that plays chess and mocks the user’s blunders. Reachy Phone Home: An anti-procrastination tool that detects when a user picks up their phone and tells them to get back to work. Language Tutor: A physical companion that listens to speech and corrects accents. F1 Race Commentator: A desk companion that calls Formula 1 races live as they happen.

Delangue himself related to VentureBeat that in only a few hours, he built an app for his own Reachy Mini robot at the Hugging Face Miami office to have the robot act as a receptionist.