Weekly Digest
Apr 20 - Apr 26, 2026
9 articles that week
Predictive Mobile Agent #3: Installing the Brain — Bringing Your On-Device AI to Life in Flutter
Amorn Apichattanakul from KBTG reveals the hidden trap that breaks on-device AI: your Dart preprocessing code must match your Python training code bit-for-bit, or your 15KB model becomes useless.
Beyond Local Rendering: Building a Server-Driven UI System with RemoteCompose
Theekshana Alwis from PickMe built a subscription screen that updates instantly—no app store approval, no waiting. He used RemoteCompose to turn Jetpack Compose UI into a binary format streamed from the server.
Building Shopify POS for Android Using MVVM
Richa Khanna from Shopify reveals how their team migrated a 3.5-year-old Android POS app from competing MVC/MVP architectures to MVVM without a full rewrite.
Record, generate, run: AI-powered UI test generation for iOS
Grab Engineering just turned a days-long iOS testing nightmare into a 10-minute workflow. Their AI-powered system records your app interactions and auto-generates complete UI tests, including mocks, feature flags, and analytics verification.
React Native Skia: A Year in Review and a Look Ahead
William Candillon and the Shopify team shipped 89 releases of React Native Skia in 12 months. Their secret? A custom renderer that runs on iOS, Android, Web, and Node.js with zero platform coupling.
Maintaining a Swift and Objective-C Hybrid Codebase
Adrianna Chang from Shopify reveals how to write new Swift code in legacy Objective-C apps without rewriting everything. The secret? Strategic bridging patterns that let both languages coexist.
Leveraging AI to build a faster iOS CI system
Muhieddine EL Kaissi from Thumbtack cut iOS CI time in half using runtime coverage instead of running every test. His Smart Test Selection system proves you don't need faster tests—you need fewer tests.
From GIFs to Lottie: Mastering Lottie Animations in Android with Jetpack Compose
Pavithra Chamod J from PickMe Engineering makes the case: if you're still using GIFs for Android animations, you're leaving performance and control on the table. Lottie animations offer vector-based crispness, runtime control, and smaller file sizes—but only if you know how to implement them properly.
Xcode Instruments Time Profiler: Improve performance with AI
Antoine van der Lee just achieved a 25x performance improvement using AI agents and Xcode Instruments. His workflow shows how AI can analyze profiling data and iterate on optimizations faster than manual debugging.