[HN Gopher] Launch HN: A0.dev (YC W25) - React Native App Generator
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Launch HN: A0.dev (YC W25) - React Native App Generator
Hi HN -- we're Seth and Ayo and we're building a0.dev
(https://a0.dev). a0.dev is a platform built to cut down React
Native development time from weeks to just a few hours. We've been
building mobile apps together for seven years and have had several
successes. One thing that's always bothered us though is how much
harder it is to build a mobile app than a website. If you've built
an app with React Native before you're familiar with the pains of
working with both Xcode and Android Studio, writing tons of
boilerplate before you can even start making the app, setting up
state management, and of course going through the dreaded app
review. We decided to build a platform that would make the app
development process faster. We've seen the success of new code-gen
platforms like v0 and wanted something for React Native that goes
further. We built an AI app generator that takes a user's prompt
and creates a custom React Native app with an instant live preview.
Here's a 5min demo where we recreated the Hacker News UI:
https://youtu.be/f3lzBRBUous a0.dev is great for quickly
prototyping components and screens in React Native and users are
able to copy the code from our generator into their preferred
development environment. Our landing page has a couple of example
prompts, but we encourage you to get creative when trying it out.
We've had success generating not only functional screens like an
Instagram Feed but also 2d games like Minesweeper or Flappy Bird.
Our chat has a "UI Expert" and "Advanced Logic" model users can
switch between depending on the task at hand. Users can upgrade
from working on a single screen to creating a full app by clicking
on the "Need a Full App" button in the top right of the page. This
changes the scope from a standalone chat with a single file to a
full project that can include multiple chats and files. We launched
an IOS app that users can download in order to preview the app on a
physical device. We find that many apps look and feel better on a
physical device so we recommend trying it out. Our goal is to
continue to improve the app generator while adding more features to
help developers get their apps to the app store and make money from
those apps. The main features on our roadmap right now are a
Supabase integration and a "one click submit" button to let
developers publish their app to the App Store. There are a few
limitations to note. We're working on releasing our Android app,
but Android users should be able to preview their app using the
Expo Go App. The app is running React Native Web in the browser so
any dependencies that don't support web won't work with the web
preview but should work on the phone. There are also some
dependencies that our system can't handle because they require
native modules that aren't packaged into our app currently. We
hope you guys will check it out and try making an app with a0.dev.
We're available on Discord around the clock to help developers with
any problems they may face and want to guide people to actually
releasing their app on the App Store. Let us know what features
you'd like to see and any problems you've faced building apps, we'd
love to hear about your experience. Here's the link again to check
it out: (https://a0.dev) We dropped the need to sign up for the
first message so you can just jump in and try it out. Looking
forward to your thoughts!
Author : sethburster
Score : 128 points
Date : 2025-02-11 17:08 UTC (5 hours ago)
| martypitt wrote:
| Congrats on shipping.
|
| I'm curious how commodotized the underlying LLM's are for
| generating this type of code? (And thereby, how big the moat is
| for companies like vercel/bolt surrounding v0 et al).
|
| What models are you using to power the code editor? Did it
| require much customization?
|
| Is it likely that enterprises would be able to eventually bring
| their own LLM's, or does the training make that prohibitive?
| cmdtab wrote:
| Bolt is actually open source. You can see how it works
|
| https://github.com/stackblitz/bolt.new
| ayomide321 wrote:
| It takes quite a bit of configuration to add a new LLM, because
| of this I don't believe its in our roadmap
| colesantiago wrote:
| I was just about to sign off on a 6 figure deal for someone to
| make a app for our pest control SaaS, and I just saw this right
| now and now considering trying this out if it gets the cost low
| significantly.
|
| I would imagine for those who want to are agencies / developers
| building apps who charge a fortune doesn't make sense anymore
| with tools like Replit.it, Bolt, Devin and now A0.
|
| Great work Seth and Ayo for making it easier and potentially
| bringing to cost of building an app down close to free as I'm
| assuming this is now free as it is just a sign up.
|
| Is there any pricing on this?
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| Have a small saas for apps, probably can help you for less then
| 6 figures. Although custom work is probably required
| alluro2 wrote:
| Depending on what you need in the app, we at eLogii might have
| sufficient configurability to support your workflows out of the
| box, or with little customization. We work with some quite
| large pest control businesses, and you might get more than just
| the app (route optimization etc).
| siquick wrote:
| Building a RN app without any features (authentication,
| notifications) is easy - but adding those features and then
| navigating the outside-app ecosystem isn't. It's definitely not
| like the web.
| ayomide321 wrote:
| We have a subscription for $20/mo which comes with unlimited
| messages
| sirjaz wrote:
| Congrats, but you should add support for Windows and macos apps.
| https://microsoft.github.io/react-native-windows/
| jhsvsmyself wrote:
| Just signed up. Are you guys going to provide some scaffolding
| code that I can download as a zip for Android or iOS? This would
| really make it a killer for my workflow.
| ayomide321 wrote:
| We do plan to have github support and zip export pretty soon!
| chaosprint wrote:
| Your title is honest, and your description of the limitations is
| honest. It is also pragmatic to allow you to try it without
| registering. This is the way to success.
| sethburster wrote:
| Thankyou!
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| This is pretty cool. Is it possible to add a stop button similar
| to other apps?
| sethburster wrote:
| what would the stop button do?
| langitbiru wrote:
| Generating code takes some time. Sometimes when we look at
| the generated code half way, we know that it's not what we
| want. Better to stop and edit the prompt.
| sethburster wrote:
| Ah gotcha, I thought you meant for the app. We'll add this.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I just tried this one out, the generated code is blurred
| out as it is generating, which I think is not desirable.
| new_user_final wrote:
| https://a0.dev/chat/36310f55-923c-4ec7-97ee-263f7460049c
|
| How do I share chat? I tried to build public bus tracker as a
| test but there are issues using external libraries.
| ayomide321 wrote:
| There should be an add import button above the code, whats the
| library?
| twism wrote:
| Saw the demo video no sound didnt read the post and was like bet
| this guy is Nigerian. Congrats. No carry last
| awaseem wrote:
| This is awesome for RN devs, any chance to build something like
| this for Swift UI? I know it might be kind hard to get native
| components rendering in a webui like this. Anyway super cool!
| fuddle wrote:
| The chess game it generated is pretty sad:
| https://ibb.co/5Xk57m5k
| kristopolous wrote:
| That's a great design.
| solardev wrote:
| Looks like a fun mix between chess and a tower defense game
| like Orcs Must Die[1]. I'd play that!
|
| [1]
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/2273980/Orcs_Must_Die_Dea...
| Kiro wrote:
| I agree and people downvoting you are dumb. Chess + Orcs Must
| Die would be a fantastic concept!
| redeux wrote:
| Cool, I'll play black
| growthwtf wrote:
| So, I use a lot of AI tools. I would say that baseline for
| 'coding agents' today to make it usable is that you need to
| recover from error messages and lints automatically. Once you can
| do that it will be a lot easier to use.
| instagary wrote:
| Congrats on the launch!
|
| This kinda reminds me of Expo snacks (https://snack.expo.dev/),
| but with a chat.
| rushingcreek wrote:
| This is an awesome demo and I hope you succeed.
|
| I've dabbled in building a tool of this type and something I've
| learned is that making single-task demo apps (like chess or snake
| game) is much faster and simpler than making production-grade
| apps that could make a real business. In fact, the process of
| making these demo apps production ready (polishing the UI, adding
| features, etc.) would usually result in the user giving up. In
| our implementation, it was much trickier for the system to
| understand the nuances of polishing than getting the broad
| strokes of the initial demo. I'd love to know if you've ran into
| this and what your thoughts are on getting around it.
| aylmao wrote:
| The UI is very well built! Love the details too-- from the line
| additions/deletions live counter while the AI is generating code,
| to the logo that points towards your cursor.
| sethburster wrote:
| thanks! the pointing logo is my favorite.
| hansonkd wrote:
| I had the opposite reaction. seems like a cheap knockoff of v0,
| just styled worse. Even the name. (at least the name v0 makes
| sense).
|
| Kind of put me off of using the product because it seemed like
| they just put "Build me a v0 clone with distracting animations"
| into v0.dev
| preaching5271 wrote:
| How is this different from just using Cursor on my react-native
| codebase? Cursor in agent mode means: no copy paste, implements
| features and fixes errors iteratively, knows my codebase and
| adheres to existing patterns. If I need changes, I just ask
| Cursor and preview live app changes locally
| justchad wrote:
| Cursor is quite a bit better as well at not adding erroneous
| code. Was testing a0 and it kept getting stuck in endless loops
| of errors. I'm sure they'll improve but it's pretty rough right
| now.
| sethburster wrote:
| We know Cursor is very good at code-gen and are improving our
| system to catch up. Our goal is to make the entire app
| development process faster and easier which involves alot of
| stuff outside of code-gen that we're working on and Cursor
| likely won't.
| boole1854 wrote:
| > which involves alot of stuff outside of code-gen that we're
| working on
|
| Could you elaborate on what extra stuff you are working on
| that will be a value-add over standalone Cursor?
| sethburster wrote:
| Yeah, integrations like Supabase, In-App
| Purchases/Subscriptions setup, Notifications, and App Store
| submission
| richardw wrote:
| [delayed]
| PKop wrote:
| >Android users should be able to preview their app using the Expo
| Go App
|
| Can't get the QR Code to scan on my Pixel 8 in Expo Go. Camera
| just sits there staring at it. Could be unique to my phone not
| sure if working for others.
|
| Got it to use an API I'm working with that requires JSONP to get
| around CORS. But this causes error to show about using browser
| APIS. Thought I could insert platform checks to determine web vs
| / android and whether to use JSON/JSONP but it still wants to
| remove any logic referring to web. Just FYI about the impedance
| mismatch of testing in browser assuming native environment.
| sputknick wrote:
| I'm a fan, and this is something I would use, but I would prefer
| a per-use or per-token payment option. That would get me to use
| it more often. As it stands, I might sign up for one or two
| months a year.
| wg0 wrote:
| Have watched video. But haven'tried yet.
|
| Tons of work work to package everything in minimal decent
| functional product.
|
| Great work, looking forward to use (and possibly subscribe)
| later.
| mdolon wrote:
| This is one of the most impressive demos I've seen in a while.
| Really nice job!
| gardenhedge wrote:
| Is there anything stopping you, a0, from just seeing the best
| apps users make and then taking that idea and launching it
| yourself?
| jc4p wrote:
| This is super cool (i do a LOT of react native after years of
| doing native development) -- one thing I'd love: Adding easy
| upgrades, right now if I leave a RN app for a while getting it to
| compile on latest iOS/Android again requires a lot of manual
| labor and reviewing rn-diff-purge. Good luck on the project!
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| The black border around the QR code prevents it from scanning on
| my Pixel 9 Pro.
|
| If I screenshot it, crop it and paste it into a blank doc, I can
| scan it.
| enisberk wrote:
| The demo looks great, congrats on the launch! I also appreciate
| your response regarding the Cursor comment. Is Onlook[1] a
| competitor at some level, or do you think it's different enough?
|
| [1]https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Mkl-onlook-cursor-
| for-d...
| hslee16 wrote:
| congrats on the launch!
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(page generated 2025-02-11 23:00 UTC)