Technology
Shopify returns to native mobile apps, citing agents’ help with duplicated work
Shopify is moving its mobile apps from React Native to separate Swift and Kotlin codebases, according to Simon Willison’s account of the company’s announcement. Shopify says coding agents now handle enough implementation, translation, testing and review to reduce the importance of maintaining two platforms. The shift also affects its open-source libraries: react-native-skia and flash-list are finding new homes, while restyle is scheduled for archiving at the end of 2026.
Editorial summary · Feed excerpt
What matters
- Shopify adopted React Native in 2020 to reduce duplicate development and improve feature parity.
- The company acknowledges that maintaining two native platforms still carries additional costs.
- The claimed improvement from agents is not accompanied by measured productivity results in the supplied excerpt.
Why this made the edition
The excerpt provides a concrete architecture decision, its attributed rationale and specific library consequences, though no independent productivity measurements.
Source material