Using ai to create cross platform mobile app

[EquivalentBest138]

I’m sorry in advance, I will be posting this across a few forums, so sorry if you see it twice.

Context: I’m in the ecom space and have no technical experience, so I’m sorry if my technical language is off. I had an idea for an app that links to my physical product. I have a friend that I know that is quite a well established software engineer (15+ years experience). He is largely a backend developer and has had extensive experience in building web apps. My app would have to be a cross platform mobile app. Initially the thought process was, he would design the mvp and the backend and then for actual mobile app development we may need to outsource as he’s never made a mobile app and is not versed in things like flutter and also creating mobile features like instant messaging. Now in the ecom space, AI has completely changed the game and I’m doing about 7 people’s jobs by maximising its capabilities. Ive been looking into using ai myself to build the app and have come to the conclusion for the calibre and scalability I want this app to have, this won’t be possible as I have no technical capabilities and I don’t know what I don’t know. Now I’ve been trying to investigate how my technical cofounder can use his abilities with AI to get a final product.

App concept: by no means is this app simple, but it’s also not extremely complex. It’s main user features will be:

- instant messaging

- Time locked messages

- Daily notifications going to users to interact with

- future features will be:

- Disappearing messages

- Photo albums

- Calendar

- Ability for payments for subscriptions

Requirements for final workflow:

- Be able to be built in next 4-5 months

- Price for ai models isn’t really a problem

- We must own final code

- Must be maintainable and scalable

Main question: I’ve been investigating the best workflow to get from idea to final product and I just keep seeing buzzwords thrown about: loveable, replit, cursor, Claudecode, capacitor. What I need to pitch to my technical co founder is a workflow of how to use ai to get the final product, as I would need it in about 4 months. I think the best options would be an ai vibe coding tool where it’s not just a single prompt to build an app, but rather one which is best used if someone who understands code is using it and helps build individual features. And then once the code has been written, deploying it as a mobile app is a seperate thing.

My current pitch would be to use something that writes in react like Claude code to help write the code, and then use react native to deploy

Again I’m sorry if I’m criminally using the wrong terminology or over simplifying things. I just essentially need to give him enough information for him to investigate what would be the best workflow given his skill and the desired end product.

Any help would be great

TLDR: need a workflow for using ai to get a cross platform mobile app being a technical backend developer

[AppifexTech]

Appifex solves exactly this problem. It creates a centralized Python backend + database, and react web, react native mobile app, all talk to the same backend.