Autotomy architecture guides
AI coding &
React Native architecture.
Practical reading paths for Expo and React Native developers: structure the app, verify a change, and keep external services replaceable.
How do you keep AI-written code maintainable?
Give the coding agent explicit ownership boundaries, a small change to make, and checks that can reject an invalid result. Architecture rules become useful when they describe both where code belongs and how to verify the change.
- Define which layer owns the decision and which layer performs the side effect.
- Ask for one feature slice with explicit inputs, outputs, and failure states.
- Review the diff and run the project’s full verification command before building on it.
From Vibe Code to Production: Why Your AI-Coded React Native App Needs Guardrails to Scale
AI can ship your React Native MVP fast, but without guardrails each small change can break unrelated flows.
AI Coding in Production: Why Most Teams Quit
Most teams try AI coding, ship code that fails QA, and quit. The problem isn't the model—it's the absence of guardrails that make AI output trustworthy.
AI-Generated Code and the Replaceability Principle
The real measure of AI-generated code quality is not whether it works on day one. It is whether you can replace it on day thirty without rewriting everything else.
How do you verify a change beyond happy-path tests?
Choose checks for the failure you want to catch. Type checks catch invalid type relationships; boundary rules catch forbidden imports; property-based tests explore input combinations; contract tests check promises between components. Coverage reports show exercised code, not proof that every requirement is correct.
- Write the invariant or contract before selecting a test technique.
- Test failure paths and boundary values as well as successful requests.
- Keep the required checks in one repeatable local and CI command.
Your API broke in production because CI was testing code, not contracts
Most CI pipelines catch syntax errors and logic bugs. They miss the API contract breaks that actually take down production. Here's how to fix that.
How to Kill a Surviving Mutant When You Don't Understand What It Changed
Mutation testing found a survivor and you have no idea what the mutation even does.
TypeScript let me pass a user ID where an order ID belongs
Type aliases don't create distinct types in TypeScript. Branded types do, and they can save you from mixing up identifiers at compile time.
Where should authentication, payments, and storage live?
Put provider-specific work behind service interfaces. Your app’s product rules should consume a validated result instead of depending directly on a vendor SDK or storage format. That separation gives you a place to handle unavailable services, retries, and invalid responses.
- Define the request, result, and expected failures at the boundary.
- Keep network and storage effects in adapters with explicit dependencies.
- Review retry safety and provider changes independently from screen presentation.
How Cursor and Claude Code Destroy Your React Native Architecture (And How to Fix It)
AI-generated auth feels fine until a new feature reaches into the wrong service.
Your retry loop assumes the first request failed. It probably didn't.
A timeout or crash does not mean your API request was lost.
Why Your Vibe-Coded React Native App Crashes on Launch (And How to Stop It)
If optional SDKs initialize like core infrastructure, they can crash your app on launch.