The Screen Automation Exclusion Protocol, or SAEP, published by ByteDance's Doubao phone assistant, closed its 30-day public comment period on October 14, and with it came the protocol's first hard numbers. Doubao's latest refusal list now runs to 155 apps, and the names on it read like a map of the Chinese mobile internet: WeChat, QQ, Taobao, Alipay, Amap, Meituan and Kuaishou are all on it, spanning the Tencent, Alibaba, Meituan and Kuaishou ecosystems.
SAEP is Doubao's mechanism for app developers to declare whether they consent to being operated by an AI agent. Apps that have explicitly declared refusal will not be subject to screen automation by the assistant, meaning the agent will not read their interfaces or simulate taps inside them. The protocol was introduced alongside the Nubia-built Doubao agent phone, which uses GUI automation as its core technical route: the AI recognizes what is on the screen and operates it like a human would, with no app-side integration required.
That universality is exactly why the super apps are pushing back. GUI automation can in theory take over any application without the developer's cooperation, but it touches the three most sensitive nerves a platform has: traffic sovereignty, data boundaries and risk control. When a user no longer opens a super app's homepage or recommendation feed but instead asks an AI to compare prices and place the order, the platform's advertising display, recommendation loops and membership funnels are bypassed entirely.
The commercial stakes are considerable. Super apps monetize the path a user takes through their product, and agent-mediated transactions replace that path with a single instruction. Payment and account operations add another layer of concern, since each automated action on balances, orders or credentials creates new fraud and dispute surfaces that existing risk systems were not designed to police.
The alternative route is quieter but slower: instead of simulating taps, agents call structured interfaces that app developers deliberately expose, with every action traceable, billable and auditable. Several Chinese phone makers have taken this approach, but cross-app coverage then depends on negotiating integrations one company at a time, and the experience falls far short of what GUI automation promises on day one.
Neither route resolves the underlying conflict, which Beijing Business Today framed as a new entrance war: AI assistants want to own the moment a task is expressed, while super apps want to keep owning everything that happens after it. The 155-app refusal list is the clearest signal yet that China's largest platforms intend to defend that boundary, and that the agent era's hardest problems are not model capabilities but business ones.
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