I just wanted to say how much I love using Replit Agents — they’ve become an essential part of my development workflow. I’ve built over 10 products using them, and currently spend around $200–250/month on Replit. That number will likely grow, and I’m more than happy with that, since I earn more through the products I build here.
That said, there’s one major limitation that’s been bugging me: the lack of support for Expo/React Native apps via Replit Agents. I’m about to start working on a new project in next 10 days — an AI-powered ebook + audiobook reader for custom-translated books — and I’ll need both web and mobile apps for it.
I’m currently leaning toward using bolt.new for this and similar future projects, since it supports the Expo/React Native workflow out of the box. For any project that involves a mobile app — which many of mine do — I’ll need to rely on a platform that can handle both web and mobile builds smoothly.
If Replit Agents were able to support building and deploying Expo apps directly (not just through Assistants), I’d much prefer to stay fully within the Replit ecosystem.
If this is something your team is considering, I’d love to know — happy to be a test user if needed. Keep up the great work!
Hi Adnan, I would like to +1 this request. In fact I’d like to +1000 it.
I absolutely love Replit and am using it to help non-tech founders build web apps. But increasingly getting requests for mobile apps, and so full Expo coverage with the Replit Agent is an absolute must.
But Adnan, I wonder if you have tried this?
create a basic hello world app in my clients Replit account
delete all the files
remix/pull in (via git or zip) my existing app that had been built in my own Replit account
Because it started as a fresh app, the Agent is available, even though I have technically remixed an app.
Admittedly, it is very messy and it takes the Agent a while to get it all working - but it does eventually.
The assistant together with the EXPO are not working good enough.
I made some small changes in the dummy app I created for testing such as update images or display multiple images in type of visual effect and experienced a lot of frustration that made me to abond Replit and go to Bolt.new. (which aslo has challanges with native apps cration)
Really will be happy if Replit start supporting React Native
A quick update on Replit and building native apps with Agent…
Let’s be honest, Expo is a disaster when paired with Assistant. I dumped it a few weeks ago after blowing a lot of credits and losing too much hair on my head trying to make it work. Expo is simply a hiding to nothing, and Assistant is unable to make it really sing and dance beyond the basic cat photo app Replit use to show off this terrible tech stack.
But… I have found a new way to build native apps inside Replit… with Agent!
I have Android and iOS native apps on my phones in front of me right now, integrated with camera, mic, and more device specific stuff, as well as a backend server (available via web) within the same app and connected to Supabase DB, user auth and file storage.
And it is all built via Replit Agent Not a single line of code actually written by me.
Probably a world first - and no other platforms (Replit competitors) seem to have figured it either!!
However, now for the tease. Forgive me for not announcing how I’ve done it today, as I am perfecting the workflow.
But please watch this space! I am very close, a few weeks or so and all will be revealed
Oh man, I can’t wait to see what you have. I, too, have been pulling my hair trying to make Assistant work with Expo. (I actually gave up using Assistant to do any heavy lifting. Sometimes it introduces more bugs.)
I actually tried asking Agent to convert an existing react app to use react native for web. When running the expo web server, it got the local url to work. But when I scan the EXPO QR code using expo on my phone, I got “uncaught error: java.io.IOException: Failed to download remote update”
Not a single line of code actually written by me.