Project
Shopify's internal set of LLM tools and skills for migrating app screens from React Native to native code through gated, reviewed checkpoints.
Shopify is moving every mobile app off React Native to Swift and Kotlin, with its Shop app in stores 12 weeks after a one-week agent-built prototype. The shipped app came out of a gated, screen-by-screen review process that a team copying Shopify would have to build first.
Reality
Shopify is moving every one of its apps off React Native to native Swift and Kotlin, and rebuilt its Shop app that way in 12 weeks. The switch leaves three Shopify-maintained React Native libraries, including the widely used FlashList, archived or without a maintainer.
Reality
Six engineers shipped a fully native Shop app in 12 weeks, but the first attempt at handing the React Native code to a model produced what Shopify's engineering director called slop. Helix chunks each screen instead.
Perspective Coverage
5 publishersReality
Shopify's Helix ports its 300-plus-screen app off React Native in small LLM-built checkpoints, each held behind four gates. The design assumes the model's first attempt is wrong, so most of the adoption cost sits in test harnesses and a written architecture.
Reality
Shopify's case for dropping React Native rests on agents porting features between iOS and Android. The tooling built around those agents shows how much human review that still takes, and what the switch costs in hotfix speed.
Reality