Quick clarification, since people mix these up: Expo isn't really "instead of" React Native — it's the framework I build React Native with. The actual choice was Expo's managed workflow vs. bare React Native (and React itself is web — wrong tool for an app that needs native push and a full-screen alarm). I went with Expo, and it wasn't close: 1. EAS Builds. I ship iOS + Android from one command, no babysitting Xcode and Gradle. As a solo founder, that alone paid for itself. 2. Config plugins let me go native exactly where I needed to. Clutch Alarm's whole thing is a loud, full-screen alarm that bypasses silent mode — that takes real native Android work (full-screen intent, alarm audio attributes, screen wake, bundling the sound file). Expo's config plugins let me do all of it without ejecting and owning the entire native project. 3. Expo Router + OTA updates. File-based routing kept the app clean, and over-the-air updates mean I can push a fix the same night a bug shows up — no waiting on store review. Bare React Native would've handed me more raw control I didn't need, in exchange for a lot more setup and maintenance I really didn't want. Expo got Clutch Alarm into people's pockets faster — and still let me reach down to the metal for the one feature that matters most. 🚀

Honestly? I tried a few — they're all genuinely impressive, so this isn't a "the others are bad" take. For me it came down to how it felt to ship with. Claude Code lives in my terminal and does the work end-to-end. In basically one sitting it built our Product Hunt gallery, recreated the app as a clickable web demo (clutchalarm.com/demo), hosted the launch film, rendered the promo video, and deployed it all to production — without me babysitting every step. What kept me on it: • Agentic in the right way — I give it a goal, it explores the repo, plans, and follows through across files instead of handing me a snippet to wire up. • Stays out of the way — terminal-native, no new IDE to live in. • Less rework — when it said something was deployed, it actually was; it verified its own work. Alternatives I considered: • Codex 3.0 (OpenAI) — seriously strong at code gen; my flow just ended up more agent-first. • Google Antigravity — slick, clearly the future of IDE-native; I didn't want to move editors for this. • Cursor — love it for hands-on editing; here I needed something that runs the whole build→deploy chain itself. Tips if you're using any of these: 1. Give it a goal, not a recipe — let it plan. 2. Feed it your real context (repo, brand files, patterns) so output stops looking generic. 3. Make it verify — tell it to actually run/deploy and check, not just write code. 4. Offload the glue — assets, screenshots, deploys, boilerplate. 5. Commit often and read the diffs. They might win on paper specs. For solo-founder, ship-it-tonight reality, this is the one that got Clutch Alarm out the door. 🚀

Clutch Alarm

Sleep through the night. Wake up for the goals.

Sleep through the night. Wake up for the goals.

Products used by Clutch Alarm

Explore the tech stack and tools that power Clutch Alarm. See what products Clutch Alarm uses for development, design, marketing, analytics, and more.