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Launch HN: A0.dev (YC W25) – React Native App Generator

263 points by sethburster ↗ HN
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!

105 comments

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martypitt
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?

ayomide321
It takes quite a bit of configuration to add a new LLM, because of this I don’t believe its in our roadmap
colesantiago
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
Have a small saas for apps, probably can help you for less then 6 figures. Although custom work is probably required
alluro2
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
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
We have a subscription for $20/mo which comes with unlimited messages
jhsvsmyself
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
We do plan to have github support and zip export pretty soon!
chaosprint
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.
zitterbewegung
This is pretty cool. Is it possible to add a stop button similar to other apps?
sethburster
what would the stop button do?
langitbiru
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
Ah gotcha, I thought you meant for the app. We'll add this.
johnisgood
I just tried this one out, the generated code is blurred out as it is generating, which I think is not desirable.
twism
Saw the demo video no sound didnt read the post and was like bet this guy is Nigerian. Congrats. No carry last
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awaseem
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
The chess game it generated is pretty sad: https://ibb.co/5Xk57m5k
redeux
Cool, I’ll play black
Zopieux
This demonstrates pretty much exactly how LLM-first development is in 2025: the hallucinated code compiles, but it's absolutely useless.
Kiro
Yeah, no. Haven't had an LLM fail at a task in months. Do you seriously think so many people would be Cursor customers if all it produced was useless?
growthwtf
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.
rushingcreek
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.

sethburster
Thank you for the support! Getting a polished production app can definitely be challenging if you're using just the AI. Depending on the quality bar you're going for we expect the user may need to do some coding themselves if they're struggling with the LLM. We think there are alot of apps that can be made and can make money with just the LLM today and expect to have users who are just using the LLM and also those who are willing to code themselves. As we build out more non code-gen features our offering should get more appealing to that second group of users.
aylmao
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
thanks! the pointing logo is my favorite.
hansonkd
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

aylmao
> seems like a cheap knockoff of v0

I can't count the number of great creations that started as a "cheap knockoffs" of something else.

> Even the name.

"A" for app? Even if it didn't make sense (and I think it does) it's short, memorable, and "making sense" wouldn't matter. Didn't stop "Venmo", "Snowflake", or "Apple" haha

Don't be too committed to your taste in UI/Names. You might miss out on good products like this one

preaching5271
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
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
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
> 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
Yeah, integrations like Supabase, In-App Purchases/Subscriptions setup, Notifications, and App Store submission
richardw
I would guess Replit-like (or Vercel-like) automation of aspects that are RN-specific. Eg typical mobile integrations, databases, more focus on UI (design screens with drag and drop + LLM chat), secrets. Focusing means they’re able to make features work better for just one type of developer, and can move faster. Cursor would need to solve for all types of development since their users probably do everything in all languages from web to mobile to backend etc.
petrbela
Cursor is for programmers. Ultimately, you decide what the code should be.

v0/lovable/a0 will replace drag-and-drop "no-code" tools for non-programmers who don't care about code and only decide what the product should do. The tool will likely also manage hosting, either directly or through service providers, to ensure a seamless e2e experience, automatically fix runtime issues etc.

The question remains, will there be a need for Cursor and programmers in the future at all.

teaearlgraycold
Far enough into the future - of course not.

But keep in mind any point where programmers are obsolete is also the point where any job that can be done from a computer is obsolete. Including WYSIWYGing an app.

tuananh
This is good. I really didn't think of that aspect.
PKop
>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
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
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.

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mdolon
This is one of the most impressive demos I've seen in a while. Really nice job!
gardenhedge
Is there anything stopping you, a0, from just seeing the best apps users make and then taking that idea and launching it yourself?
ripped_britches
Only the massive amount of effort it takes to start a company
jc4p
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
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.