The solo dev playbook: ship faster with Expo, EAS Build, and OTA Updates
Article Summary
Liam Du built and shipped Wellspoken—an AI-powered articulation coach—to both iOS and Android in one week. Zero Xcode. Zero Android Studio. Just Expo.
Du, founder of Wellspoken, shares his complete technical playbook for building a production app with audio recording, video capture, push notifications, and secure auth. The app hit $500+ revenue in its first month with 400+ users, proving you can ship fast without sacrificing quality.
Key Takeaways
- expo-audio hooks handled cross-platform recording with zero native code
- OTA updates fixed post-launch bugs in 15 minutes (no app store wait)
- EAS Build eliminated all certificate and provisioning profile management
- First paying customer within 24 hours of launch
- expo-secure-store added encrypted token storage in 5 minutes
Critical Insight
A solo developer shipped a feature-rich, revenue-generating mobile app to both platforms in one week by leveraging Expo's SDK and EAS services instead of fighting native tooling.
