30 Shopify engineers rebuilt a 300-screen app in 12 weeks with agents writing most of the code
schwentker · x · 2026-11-11
Shopify Engineering details how 30 engineers rebuilt its mobile app from React Native to native Swift and Kotlin in 12 weeks — 300+ screens, home/lockscreen widgets, an Apple Watch app, complications, and Siri Shortcuts — with agents writing most of the code.
Key insight: once agents produce code fast, the bottleneck shifts to everything around the code — architecture, tests, review process, emulator compute, and coordination.
How: a small team first rebuilt architecture, tooling, and the feedback loop so agents worked within fast-feedback workflows with clear patterns and guardrails, while humans validate, review, and approve what ships. Supporting pieces include the internal Helix migration tool, a remote dev environment for agents, and the Reflex mobile architecture.
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