How I Built a Mobile App In 4 Hours 😳


Hey Reader​

You read the correctly. I built a mobile app in 4 hours.

I was inspired by Jan, a student of my AI Builder's Blueprint, who did it two days ago himself.

You can check out his app on this website.

So last night around 9:30pm, I had one of those "what if" moments.

I stared at one of my web apps (macropulse.ai) and thought:

What would it take to turn this into a REAL mobile app?

Not a wrapper. Not a web view pretending to be an app.

But an actual native mobile app.

So I did what any sane person does at 9:30pm.

I pointed Codex and Claude at my web app directory and asked them.

Here's What Surprised Me

Claude actually knows more about mobile development than I expected.

Way more than Codex for this use case.

So I ended up building mostly with Claude, only switching to Codex when I needed to touch the Convex backend in my main project.

Fast forward 4 hours, around 12:13am..

My app was on TestFlight.

Actually shareable with real people (up to 1,000).

I spent a couple more hours today adding features, automating the build process, and testing on Android.

I even added a daily push notification to trigger re-engagement.

And I'm honestly shocked at how... easy this was.

The Rough Roadmap

If you want to try this for yourself, here's what I did.

  1. Used Expo, the cross-platform mobile framework for iPhone + Android
  2. Reused the existing Convex backend from MacroPulse.ai using new tech that is in beta
  3. Used Expo Go on my iPhone and Android to test the app while Claude wrote it
  4. Used Expo Application Services to create all the complicated Apple configuration
  5. ... and just like that my app was on TestFlight!

One Big Caveat

You need developer accounts, for both platforms.

Bit annoying to set up, but quite cheap ($99/yr for Apple and $25 one-time for Google).

Without them, you can still build the app locally, but you can't publish it.

Small cost. Annoying requirement. Worth it.

The Bottom Line

It's currently waiting for Apple approval, but once it's out I'll definitely share it with you.

But it took just 4 hours from "what if" to TestFlight - which is wild.

And this was really easy.

... if you follow the fundamentals, which you can learn from me here.

Worth trying if you always wanted to build an app!

Talk Soon,
Rob

Robin Ebers

Coder of 20+ years teaching non-technical people how to build their own software business in 30 days with AI. No devs or code required.

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