A Reality Check on Vibecoding Mobile Apps

Vibecoding a website and vibecoding a mobile app feel similar for about an hour. Then you hit the app store review queue, code signing, device permissions, and a simulator that behaves nothing like a real phone — and you realize mobile has a whole layer of friction the web never had.

None of this means AI can't build great mobile apps. It means you should walk in knowing where the smooth parts end.

What vibecoding genuinely nails on mobile

• Screens and layout. Give the AI a clear description and it produces a solid screen — lists, forms, tab bars, detail views. This is its strongest lane.
• Navigation wiring. Setting up a stack navigator, tabs, and route params is boilerplate the AI handles fast and correctly.
• State and data flow. Local state, simple stores, fetching from an API and rendering the result — all reliable.
• Standard native features via packages. Camera, location, notifications, storage — as long as there's a well-known package, the AI knows how to wire it.

If your app is "screens that show and edit data," you'll move quickly and enjoy it.

Where it gets hard

The simulator lies. Code that looks perfect in the iOS simulator or Android emulator can break on a real device — safe-area insets, keyboard behavior, camera, gestures, and performance all differ. Test on a physical phone early and often. The AI cannot see what you don't show it.

Native modules are a cliff. The moment you need something without a maintained package, you're in Swift or Kotlin bridge code. AI suggestions there are noticeably less reliable, and mistakes surface as cryptic build errors rather than clean stack traces.

Build and signing are their own skill. Provisioning profiles, certificates, keystores, bundle identifiers — this is the part that has nothing to do with your code and everything to do with getting the stores to accept your app. The AI can explain it, but it can't click through your Apple and Google consoles for you.

Review is a wall you can't prompt through. Apple in particular rejects apps for reasons that have nothing to do with whether the code works: missing privacy disclosures, "not enough functionality," using a private API, unclear permission justifications. Budget for at least one rejection and a resubmit.

The traps that sink first-timers

Building everything before testing anything. People vibecode ten screens, then try to run it, and drown in errors with no idea which screen caused them. Build one vertical slice — one screen that actually works end to end — before adding the next.

Ignoring platform differences. iOS and Android disagree about back buttons, safe areas, permissions, fonts, and date pickers. "It works on my Android" is not "it works." Ask the AI explicitly to handle both, and check both.

Skipping the store requirements until the end. Privacy policy URL, data-collection disclosures, app icons in a dozen sizes, screenshots for multiple device classes — none of it is code, all of it is required, and discovering it at submission time adds days. Read the requirements first.

Trusting the AI on store policy. Review guidelines change and the AI's training data lags. When it tells you "Apple allows X," verify against the current guidelines. Getting this wrong costs you a review cycle.

How to keep it sane

1. Prototype the idea as a PWA or a single Expo screen first. Prove the core loop is worth building before you take on the store machinery.
2. Work in vertical slices. One working screen at a time, tested on a real device, before the next.
3. Pick a stack the AI knows well — Expo/React Native keeps you in TypeScript, where the AI is strongest, and lets you build iOS without a Mac.
4. Front-load the boring requirements. Privacy policy, icons, permission strings, and store metadata gathered early turn submission day into a formality.
5. Expect the native-and-review layer to be manual. That's where your hands-on time goes. Plan for it instead of being ambushed by it.

The honest bottom line

Vibecoding gets you a working, good-looking app faster than ever — the code is rarely the hard part anymore. The hard part is everything wrapped around the code: real-device quirks, native edges, signing, and review. Those don't vibecode away. They're the tax you pay for shipping into someone else's store, and the builders who succeed are the ones who planned for the tax instead of pretending it wasn't there.

Keep going

• Do the planning up front: Planning a Mobile App Before You Prompt
• Then ship it: Shipping to the App Store and Google Play