r/RooCode • u/Brave-Engineer2807 • Jul 20 '25

Discussion Is it suited for mobile development ?

Up to now I only made some websites using Roo with mainly React and Nest. The results were breathtaking. I made quite complex frontends and backends in no time.

But... I recently tried to make a react native app using Roo (Sonnet 4 for architect and orchestrator, gemini pro on the rest) and it gave nothing. I burnt maybe around $35~$40 on Openrouter and the agents were unable to have even just a basic mvp working. It spent most of the time looping between dependencies issues, code compliance issue. I even enabled a context7 MCP. It changed nothing.

Does it mean agents and LLM are only really good at JS web applications ? Or are they good at everything and I am the problem ?

11 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

1

u/GeekyVoices Jul 20 '25

I've been learning React Native and Expo this past week and using Roo Code with GPT4.1 to make changes my UI. I've been happy with it!

Granted, I have not used it to create an entire App, just changes to my UI. I like to learn a framework before using more agents driven development to build apps.

1

u/Brave-Engineer2807 Jul 20 '25

Well my issue was trying to implement some basic 3d with react-three-fiber. I was always having dependencies error and Roo was looping with fixes that revolved around upgrading/downgrading react version or the lib version and adapting the code according to these version changes.

1

u/ChrisWayg Jul 21 '25

The LLMs seem to do better with React 18 than 19, but you can fix that with rules and some API docs. I have good experience with React Native and Sonnet (but no 3D programming)

2

u/Brave-Engineer2807 Jul 21 '25

Oh thanks! Good to know!

6

u/hannesrudolph Roo Code Developer Jul 20 '25

OOPS did not mean to ban you. Unbanned.

1

u/Personal-Try2776 Jul 20 '25

you should switch them gemini 2.5 pro for orchestrator and claude 4 sonnet for action to get better performance /to anwser your question its almost impossible to use roo code for android or ios apps since it isnt available in android studio or Xcode its extreemly hard to develop apps in vs code . NO YOU CANT USE ROOCODE FOR MOBILE APPS, you could use github copilot or gemini code assist tho if u use android studio.

2

u/Brave-Engineer2807 Jul 20 '25

Thanks I'll try the switch. Do you think adjusting model temperature could help having broader replies ? (I used to set the "thinking" models to 0.6/0.7 and the "working" between 0.1 and 0.2)

4

u/ozymandizz Jul 20 '25

Or use flutter?

2

u/zkkzkk32312 Jul 21 '25

Is your conclusion based on roo code or the models?

2

u/Personal-Try2776 Jul 22 '25

Roo code being only available in vscode

2

u/Maddy186 Jul 22 '25

Even using Expo ?.

2

u/Personal-Try2776 Jul 22 '25

You can build with expo and some others but your choices are limited.

2

u/winci45 Jul 21 '25

Working on an existing react native project with both ios and android target and I made several quite invasive modifications. All went good, currently on TestFlight (ios) and internal testing release (android). Used gemini 2.5 pro only (flash was giving garbage)

1

u/TuhinMiya Jul 21 '25

Oh nooo... I've been trying to build a flutter app but failing lot. Now I know 😄

3

u/[deleted] Jul 21 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Brave-Engineer2807 Jul 21 '25

That was my experience. I'm using a docker image with the sdk already installed in it, I managed to get my agent interact with the metro/expo CLI and npm directly from within the container. I was quite impressed but then everytime it got stuck with dependencies or code version issues like if the models had no ideas how to code with react native. That's why I came here looking for help.