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NEW v0.2.0 — Tracks, roadmaps and tiered stacks
STACK IT FIRST
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02 · Mobile

Mobile

iOS and Android apps built on one codebase an agent can hold in its head, with native code only where it earns its place.
9 stacks 4 questions 0 skills

Mobile is the track where an agent’s confidence is most dangerous. It can scaffold a screen in seconds, but it cannot feel a janky scroll, see a notification arrive, or watch a store rejection come back a week later. The stack choices here are about keeping the agent inside the loop it can verify, which is the JavaScript layer, and keeping native work small, explicit and rare.

The tiers are about release friction: how much breaks, and how slowly you can fix it, when a change is wrong. The profiles are about how much backend the agent has to reason about at the same time as the app.

Stage 1

Where are you?

Mobile tiers are about release friction. A store review, a native module, or a second platform team each raise the cost of a wrong change, and the agent needs guardrails to match.
  1. 01

    MVP · Ship it

    Expo managed workflow, a hosted backend, over-the-air updates, no native code.

    0 to a few hundred testers · You, plus an agent

    Open tier
  2. 02

    Growth · Charge for it

    Expo with EAS builds, a typed API you own, and E2E tests on real devices.

    Hundreds to tens of thousands · Two to five engineers, each with agents

    Open tier
  3. 03

    Scale · Run it for many

    Native modules or native apps behind a shared contract, with per-platform ownership.

    Tens of thousands and up · Six or more engineers, often per platform

    Open tier
Stage 2

What are you building?

The profile decides whether the app is the product, a second face of a web product, or a focused utility. That sets how much backend the agent has to reason about at the same time.
Walk the roadmap
Mobile rules

Five rules for this track.

On top of the nine cross-track principles.
  1. 01

    Stay in the JavaScript ecosystem as long as you can

    React Native with Expo shares types, tooling and training data with the web. An agent that already knows your web app knows most of your mobile app.

  2. 02

    File-based routing and typed navigation

    Expo Router turns screens into files and route params into types. Agents make far fewer navigation mistakes when the route table is the folder tree.

  3. 03

    Push native work behind a small, explicit boundary

    When you do need a native module, isolate it in one package with a TypeScript interface. The agent can then work on either side without reading both.

  4. 04

    Test on a device before every release

    Store review makes bad releases expensive. A Maestro or Detox flow the agent runs locally catches the regressions that unit tests cannot.

  5. 05

    Over-the-air updates change the risk model

    Being able to ship a JavaScript fix without a store review makes an agent-driven workflow viable. Design for it from day one and keep native changes rare.

The nine cross-track principles