Is your phone's photo gallery a chaotic mess of screenshots, vacation photos, and memes? If you're anything like me, the answer is a resounding "yes." That's why, for the Code with Kiro Hackathon, I decided towork on building "Sort It!"—a mobile app designed to bring order to your digital memories with a simple, intuitive swipe.
"Sort It!" is a React Native mobile app that lets you organize your photos into albums using intuitive swipe gestures. Think of it as Tinder for your photo gallery. Simply swipe left to discard a photo you no longer need and swipe right to save it to an album.
Here are some of the key features that the final app would have:
• Intuitive Swipe Gestures: Quickly sort through your photos with a simple and familiar interface.
• Smart Album Management: The app automatically detects existing albums like 'Camera' and 'Downloads' and allows you to create your own.
• Optimized Performance: Built with performance in mind, 'Sort It!' can handle thousands of photos smoothly.
The Tech Stack: Tools of the Trade
For this project, I used the following technologies:
• React Native: To build a cross-platform mobile app for both iOS and Android.
• Expo: To streamline the development process and simplify the build and deployment process.
• TypeScript: To ensure the code was robust, maintainable, and less prone to errors.
• Zustand: For a lightweight and easy-to-use state management solution.
My Development Journey with Kiro: The AI-Powered IDE
The "Code with Kiro Hackathon" was the perfect opportunity to dive into the Kiro AI IDE. My previous experience with AI coding tools was mostly with Windsurf, which I appreciated for its ability to generate accurate code with minimal hallucinations. So, I was genuinely excited to see how Kiro would compare.
To be honest, there were moments using Kiro where it felt like the AI was handling most of the heavy lifting. Complex tasks were often reduced to just a few button clicks, like starting a task or running a command. For someone like me, who is still relatively new to leveraging AI so deeply in my workflow, this felt incredibly powerful.
My only other major project was a Chrome extension called "Declutter!" Using a different tool for that, I found that even simple features or bug fixes required multiple detailed prompts. I anticipated a similar, if not more complex, process for building a full mobile app. I estimated that just creating a detailed project plan would have taken 10-20 prompts with another tool.
This is where Kiro truly shined.
Using its spec and vibe modes, the initial planning felt like a piece of cake. Kiro broke down my high-level idea into a structured plan, and the core components of the app were generated with just a few clicks. I could immediately test the application by scanning a QR code with Expo Go, which is a testament to how smoothly the environment is integrated. Many VS Code forks I've used struggle with running commands in the terminal, but Kiro handled it flawlessly, allowing me to build a working development version of the app right inside the IDE.
For me, this project marked a personal milestone: it was the first time I was able to successfully push a project to Git. Kiro lowered the barrier to entry with beginner-friendly features like one-click task lists and the ability to maintain context across multiple tabs, which made the entire process feel less intimidating and more intuitive.
Even without diving into its more advanced features like Agent Hooks, I found Kiro to be as efficient as highly specialized, tailored applications. It's clear there's a lot of power under the hood. Infact the outputs and working of the apps built were close to those alternatives that were built using the now booming Rork App, that is tailored to build only mobile apps usin react and expo go.
Of course, no tool is perfect. I did find that Kiro can sometimes feel a bit complex when trying to fix minor issues, which occasionally disrupted my workflow. I also hope to see future versions incorporate more advanced models (such as claude 3.7 with thinking) and make it possible to refer an search the web for real-time information.
Overall, though, my experience was overwhelmingly positive. Kiro empowered me to take on a project I would have previously found daunting and made the development process faster and more enjoyable.
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