React Universe On Air

Zack Ebenfeld joins Michał Pierzchała to talk about AI-assisted coding, testing, QA, code review, and why verification matters more than ever in mobile workflows. It is a practical conversation about trust, feedback loops, and how engineering work is shifting from pure implementation toward judgment, architecture, and product thinking.

What happens when you combine voice agents and teddy bears? A hands-on look at local-first systems, voice AI, and security lessons from poking real apps. Kraen Hansen and Ola Desmurs-Linczewska talk about Software, AI Agents, parenting, stoicism and more!

Vercel’s v0 iOS app is built with React Native, but it looks and feels like a fully native iOS product.

In this episode of React Universe On Air, we go deep into how the v0 mobile app was built: from choosing Expo and going iOS-first, to writing native modules, fixing low-level React Native issues, and upstreaming improvements back to the ecosystem. This is a hands-on engineering conversation with Fernando Rojo, Szymon Rybczak, and Oskar kwaśniewski about real trade-offs, real constraints, and what it takes to ship a polished app under real deadlines.

Chapters
00:00 Welcome to the React Universe
00:50 Meet our guests
02:42 v0 app overview
03:45 Iterating to greatness
05:07 Choosing Expo and initial tech decisions
07:55 Code sharing with v0 website
11:03 Open Source contributions
13:20 React Native Core fixes
15:40 Android version?
18:42 Modal issues we fixed
23:20 Working with React Native Core
26:16 Balancing deadlines and root cause analysis
27:23 Native Modules and custom solutions
29:16 Minimalistic UI challenges
30:44 Floating Composer concept
33:41 Feature flags and testing
36:48 WebView swiping and custom forks
45:16 Launch experience and security concerns
50:17 Final thoughts

This year, React Universe On Air is doing something different for Christmas. No guests, demos, or framework updates. Instead, Ola Desmurs Linczewska tells a Christmas story.

A (Secure) Christmas Carol is a holiday fairytale for JavaScript and React Native developers. Set on Christmas Eve, it follows Npmezer Scrooge, a senior engineer who believes deadlines matter more than holidays, and warnings can always wait.

Over the course of one long winter night, he’s visited by unexpected guides who show him what his choices look like across time: the optimism of the past, the quiet damage of the present, and a future no one wants.

All technical details, real-world security issues, and references mentioned in the story are explained in the show notes 📚  https://clstk.com/4pEVYwv

We’ll be back in January with regular episodes. Until then, stay kind, stay curious, and have yourself a very merry Christmas.

It’s a practical, developer‑focused look at the early days of React Native on VR: what works today, what’s different from mobile, and why so many app ideas translate better than you might expect.

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to React Native on Meta Quest
01:10 Meet the guests: Jan Jaworski and Ram N
01:28 Ram’s background and experience
04:10 Jan’s background and experience
06:09 Exploring React Native on Meta Quest
07:09 How Meta Quest started
11:00 Getting started with React Native on Meta Quest
14:30 Betting on AOSP
17:00 First-mover advantage and developer opportunities
21:32 Differences between mobile and VR
24:45 Running Expo projects on the headset
25:28 React Native on Meta Quest, now for real
27:27 Starting a React Native project on Meta Quest
28:49 Developing and debugging on Meta Quest
30:19 Do you need a headset or an emulator?
31:57 Virtual Reality Development Experience
38:09 AI tooling
40:02 Meta Horizon Start Developer Competition
45:02 Conclusion and final thoughts