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

[sethburster]

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!

[adi4213]

Hey Seth and Ayo - congrats on this launch. While I think there’s certainly room for improvement, which I’ll address below - this demo makes me feel that you both can keep grinding and succeed with this. The main feedback I have is similar to others who asked how this is better than Cursor running with a react native codebase and iOS simulator running on the side. I read your response about being better at iOS/android specific things could be the case (for example, making it really nail payments and subscriptions could be useful) - but it is definitely going to be a tough battle. If someone can only use your platform and reliably have a react native codebase (version controlled on GitHub), with working Supabase auth, and fully synced with Expo (so basically almost ready to go)- that would be pretty cool! I also think there’s room for you guys to add value around some of the other annoying parts of launching a native app. If your app was able to automatically make App Store creatives and essentially publish the app for me with some user-promoting - that would be sick

[sgtwompwomp]

I hard agree. Seth, Ayo, I think you guys should be honest with yourself and ask whether you want to go toe to toe with Cursor, Windsurf, Microsoft, etc.

If not, take the other route. Go deep into the vertical of React Native. Help people with no experience run an ENTIRE BUSINESS just with your chatbot as the AI cofounder - you build the entire app and backend, handle marketing, publish it, all with AI agents. How sick would that be.

[sethburster]

Thanks for the feedback, glad to hear your optimistic about the product. The code-gen field is quite competitive and we really want to work on that higher layer of app development that goes beyond the coding. What you described with the App Store creatives is something me and Ayo have talked about and would love to implement. I hope I can come back to this thread soon and let you know its live.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[sethburster]

Thankyou!

[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.

[cchance]

I did it from the webpage, got something cool tried to add a card, and it had me signup, did google, but then my project was gone! That sucks ... losing the project during signup process is not nice UX hope you can fix that.

[jmpavlec]

I had the same experience, hitting back a couple times and refreshing the page allowed me to continue... But I imagine this would be a steep dropoff in engagement if you aren't taken back to the same page.

[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

[vessenes]

This is a great idea. LLM workflows are not nailing native apps right now; given Apple’s slow movement, it seems like you might have a little bit of a window here.

Couple comments - have you played with Aider’s architecture mode? I think your workflows would benefit from it.

Right now it looks like the UI expert specs something and builds it, and then it asks for follow up.

I think the right dev flow working with a product dreamer involves UI mockups, then follow up questions, then implementation, with checkins — combining the idea of the architect with a “Product Manager” role is what most people need to get an app out.

Second thought is that I think you could see value with a bunch of custom prompted flows later in the app process: “do you want to take stripe payments?” “Do you want to add referral tracking support?” I’m not a native app dev, but I imagine there’s a bunch of CI, Firebase, other integrations that are best practice type things. Automating this as well would be really useful, and provide value and some lock in for your customers. To expand on this, you might make the basic option use your API access to these providers, and upcharge them. They could always implement their own if they want to move away, but the default path would get you some billing off every app that grows.

Another random idea would be ‘appifying’ a web site as a simple flow for the user. This feels like it might be even faster for the average person as a way to explain what they want, and would feed a lot of technical and visual direction straight into your workflow at the same time.

Anyway, good luck! I hope you guys get traction.

[erickerr]

Opening this on desktop.. I'm not reading any of this.

Glancing in more I see react-native mentioned, and expo+expo go mentioned, but like... it's been proven time and time again that Hacker News isn't your ideal feedback loop (ie: Dropbox, AirBNB).

Why make 4 paragraphs of text when you could just say:

- We obliterated X problem: (link)

- We demonstrate why that problem is significant here: (public link or private deck)

- We are growing at X->(timeframe or whatever impressive metric)

Reach out if interested. Thanks. [[e-mail]]

[yard2010]

Personally, I prefer the text and most importantly the story. Your textbook solution is a great method IMO, but there's less fun in this.

[philjw]

Looks like a great addition to v0. Great to get a headstart and do quick iterations. My process at the moment is using v0 to get a functional prototype, then import the code to cursor and build and iterate it with my custom styling / language of choice / create components from scratch but instruct Cursor to "for component.vue take xyz from component.tsx) - (v0 basically limits you to React, Tailwind and shadcn)

Recently came across this article where Gergely describes those 2 camps of "bootstrappers and iterators" - and that's basically what it is: v0/a0 for bootstrapping, cursor/copilot for actual coding https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/how-ai-will-chang...

[atymic]

This looks good! Unfortunately I only made it a few prompts before it introduced an issue that it couldn't fix (back button not working). Kinda broke the whole process, what model does this use on the backend? Even after 5+ tries it couldn't fix the bug.

[ayomide321]

Sorry about that; this is an issue with react-native-web and its likely that it works on your mobile device. We're trying to get a solution out for this!

[cbhl]

Personally, I'd love to see you optimize for people who start and iterate upon an app from a mobile device and preview/use the app on the same device. Since the messages are just English text, the extra presses to type curly/square braces don't constrain you on mobile. Sometimes I get writer's block at my computer in a way that I don't get on my phone.

In particular, I'd hide/disable the sign-in-with-Google pop-up on phone-size screens (it takes a third of the screen for me), and make sure that CSS/styling makes everything fit on the code and preview screens on a phone, even in mWeb.

[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.

[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.

[fuddle]

The chess game it generated is pretty sad: https://ibb.co/5Xk57m5k

[solardev]

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...

[Zopieux]

This demonstrates pretty much exactly how LLM-first development is in 2025: the hallucinated code compiles, but it's absolutely useless.

[redeux]

Cool, I’ll play black

[kristopolous]

That's a great design.

[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.

[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!

[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.

[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

[sethburster]

thanks! the pointing logo is my favorite.

[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?

[cmdtab]

Bolt is actually open source. You can see how it works

https://github.com/stackblitz/bolt.new

[ayomide321]

It takes quite a bit of configuration to add a new LLM, because of this I don’t believe its in our roadmap

[enisberk]

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...

[sethburster]

Thank you! If they added React Native it could be a competitor for prototyping react native screens but I think our roadmaps are different as we're focused on the entire app development process.

[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!

[pj_mukh]

Super cool. I'd love a multi-modal loop between code gen and app results. As an AI engineer who's forced to do react-native, getting stuff pixel perfect is pretty much the bane of my existence. This is probably something cursor won't build but y'all can?

[lowkey_]

First, this looks great and congrats on the launch!

Is it possible to use Figma designs with this?

It's really hard to get something great through just a chat interface, and I've seen a lot of these AI tools don't allow me to actually give it more to work with like Figma designs.

[Oras]

While it looks nice and I like the niche, I don't see how this product will survive when the same thing is doable with Cursor and Github Copilot.

Are you planning to offer your own backend, auth, notifications .. etc? Using Supabase will not keep users on your platform.

[new_user_final]

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]

There should be an add import button above the code, whats the library?

[misiti3780]

These tools are cool but can someone explain what is the technological edge of windsurf vs cursor, vs this product, vs V0 varcel. Are they fine tuning LLMs or are they just advanced prompting wrapped around the foundational models?

[Mickymi2]

I tried it, it works well in the beginning, but ended with bug when I try to add more functions, maybe iterate some more to make it stable? I'll say A0 has great potential, if cursor or bolt can be popular, why can't A0?

[sirjaz]

Congrats, but you should add support for Windows and macos apps. https://microsoft.github.io/react-native-windows/

[gregjw]

No way. A startup called A0, founded by a guy named Ayo.

Congrats on the launch Seth/Ayo!

[yard2010]

In a parallel world they would name it 6th

[kundi]

This looks like a shameless copy of v0 and Bolt.

It’s crazy to see that VCs companies would throw money for forking and copying an open-source project, and adjusting the prompt.

[tasn]

A bit meta, but I love how the AI code generation tools show you the code being live-edited rather than just having a loading indicator. It's very visually pleasing.

[instagary]

Congrats on the launch!

This kinda reminds me of Expo snacks (https://snack.expo.dev/), but with a chat.

[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!

[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.

[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?

[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

[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).

[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.

[blacksoil]

Wow this is very easy to use. I've been using Github Co-Pilot for a while to do web dev, this is way way way more convenient :)

[sethburster]

Thanks, we think the quick preview on the web and the ability to quickly switch between alot of different apps is super valuable.

[nextworddev]

Can Bolt.new not generate react native code?

[sethburster]

They launched support for this today. We expect them to be a strong competitor but we think our experience developing indie apps and the fact that we're laser focused on Mobile Apps will help us win.

[zxilly]

It doesn't seem like a good idea to come up with a name that is directly reminiscent of v0.dev.

[ripped_britches]

Please make one for flutter, tnx

[w-ll]

I've been out the mobile work for a while, but looking for a cross platform eco, ive spent time in a lot of stuff, from react, to unity, xmarian, and uno, all these with a c# backend. But once I found dart/flutter it was a game changer. I stil like my JS/TS, I still love c#, dart is interesting, but their cross platform workflow is imho the best.

[chirag-ai]

Try Tiram.AI that can generate full fledged flutter mobile app with just your voice.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43023103

[RamblingCTO]

I'd like to suggest more contrast on the landing page, really hard to read!

[sethburster]

Definitely, we have a new design in the works

[mdolon]

This is one of the most impressive demos I've seen in a while. Really nice job!

[zitterbewegung]

This is pretty cool. Is it possible to add a stop button similar to other apps?

[sethburster]

what would the stop button do?

[TiredOfLife]

As is tradition it will be followed by two other YC startups: A1 and B0

[anandnair]

Congrats on the launch. This looks cool.

[nsonha]

Anything like this but for cordova?

[adltereturn]

That's pretty cool!

[lawgimenez]

I hope you can provide a way to delete the user account.

[hslee16]

congrats on the launch!

[twism]

Saw the demo video no sound didnt read the post and was like bet this guy is Nigerian. Congrats. No carry last