DEV Community: Amber

CatDoes Explained: How It Works, Key Features, and Top Alternatives

Amber — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 14:51:27 +0000

Building a mobile app used to mean learning React Native or Swift, setting up a backend, and then losing a week to App Store certificates. AI app builders have made the first part a lot easier. Most of them still leave the last part to you.

CatDoes is one of the tools trying to handle the whole thing. You describe the app you want, and an AI agent writes the code, sets up the backend, and publishes it to the web, the App Store, or Google Play.

In this guide you'll learn what CatDoes is, how it works, its main features, what it costs, and where it falls short. At the end there are six alternatives worth a look if it doesn't fit what you're building.

What is CatDoes?

CatDoes is an AI agent that builds mobile apps and websites from plain English. You tell it what you want, it asks a few questions, and then it builds it. That includes the screens, the database, user login, and the deploy.

Mobile apps are built with React Native and Expo, so one project runs on both iPhone and Android. Websites are built with Vite or Next.js. These are normal, widely used frameworks, so you're not stuck with a proprietary format if you want to take the code somewhere else later.

The main difference from AI coding tools like Cursor is who does the work. With Cursor you're the developer and the AI helps. With CatDoes the agent is the developer. It runs on its own computer in the cloud, installs packages, runs the app, fixes its own errors, and keeps working even if you close the browser tab.

It's aimed at founders, small businesses, and anyone who has an app idea but doesn't want to learn mobile development to ship it. It also works for developers who just want to skip the setup and the store publishing work.

How CatDoes works

1. Describe what you want

You start with a prompt, something like "a habit tracker where users log in and see their streaks." Before it writes any code, the agent asks follow-up questions to fill in what you left out. If you'd rather see a plan first, you can ask it to lay out what it's going to do without building anything yet.

2. Watch it build and test it on your phone

While the agent works, a live preview updates next to the chat. For mobile apps you can scan a QR code with the Expo Go app and run it on your own phone. It's worth doing early, because the browser preview doesn't always match how the app behaves on a real device.

3. Keep chatting to make changes

From there it's a conversation. Ask for a new screen, a different layout, or a bug fix, and the agent makes the change. Each new chat saves a checkpoint you can roll back to. When a chat gets long, the "Compact and Save" button starts a fresh one, so the agent doesn't lose track and burn extra credits.

4. Publish it

Websites go live at your-project.catdoes.app, and you can connect your own domain. For iOS, you add an Expo token and your Apple Developer credentials, the build takes 10 to 30 minutes, and then the agent submits it to the App Store. You can send it to TestFlight first or release it publicly. Android builds the same way, but you download the finished file and upload it to Google Play yourself.

Either way, the store fees are on you: $99 a year for Apple and a one-time $25 for Google.

Core features of CatDoes

Mobile apps and websites. One agent builds both. Apps are React Native with Expo, and websites are Vite or Next.js.
An agent that works in the cloud. The Compose agent runs on its own cloud computer and can split big jobs across subagents. It keeps going after you close the tab.
Built-in backend. Every plan, including the free one, comes with CatDoes Cloud: a database, user auth, file storage, edge functions, and realtime updates, hosted in the US or the EU.
App Store and Google Play builds. The agent runs the builds for both stores and submits iOS apps to the App Store for you.
App Store review check. Before you submit, it simulates Apple and Google's review and points out what would probably get rejected.
Website to app. Paste the URL of any public website and it rebuilds it as a real mobile app instead of just wrapping the site.
Checkpoints. Every chat saves a restore point, so a bad change is easy to undo.
Custom domains. Connect your own domain to the websites you publish.
GitHub import and code export. You can import an existing repo on the Core plan and up. Two-way GitHub sync and full code export come with Plus.
Watch. A built-in error tracker that catches crashes in your live app. You can then ask the agent to fix what it found.

Benefits of using CatDoes

1. You skip the App Store setup

Signing, certificates, and build tools are where a lot of people give up on their first app. CatDoes runs the builds and handles the iOS submission, so your part is mostly entering your credentials.

2. The backend is already there

Login, a database, and file storage are ready from the first prompt. You don't need a separate Firebase or Supabase account to get an app that actually saves data.

3. One project for iPhone and Android

Because apps are built with React Native, the same code runs on both platforms. You're not maintaining two separate apps.

4. You can test on a real phone right away

Expo Go puts the app on your phone while it's still being built, long before it goes anywhere near a store. You find the weird mobile bugs early.

5. Fewer surprises in app review

The review check catches common rejection reasons before Apple does. That can save you a round of fixing, resubmitting, and waiting again.

6. You're not locked in

The code is standard React Native, Vite, or Next.js. On Plus and up you can sync it to GitHub or export it and keep building somewhere else.

Limitations to know about

CatDoes isn't perfect, and a few things are worth knowing before you sign up.

App Store and Google Play publishing starts on the Starter plan. The free plan and Core only publish to the web, so if the stores are the goal, Starter is your real starting price.

Google Play isn't fully hands-off. iOS submission is handled by the agent, but for Android you download the build and upload it through the Play Console yourself.

You still need your own accounts: an Expo account and an Apple Developer account for iOS, plus a Google Play developer account for Android. The agent helps you set them up, but it's not zero setup.

How much does CatDoes cost?

There's a free plan with 25 one-time credits that publishes to the web only. Paid plans are monthly, and each one comes with a set number of credits. Core is $20 for 50 credits, Starter is $50 for 200, Plus is $100 for 400, Pro is $200 for 900, and Max is $399 for 2,000.

The pricing page shows yearly prices by default, so Starter shows up there as $42 a month. The prices above are the monthly ones as of late September 2026.

CatDoes alternatives

If CatDoes isn't the right fit, here are 13 alternatives worth checking out.

Conclusion

AI can write app code pretty well now. What still separates these tools is everything after the code: the backend, the builds, app review, and getting into the stores.

That's where CatDoes puts its effort. It gives you a backend on every plan, runs your builds, checks for review problems, and submits iOS apps for you. The trade-offs are that store publishing starts at $50 a month, credit costs are hard to predict, and Android still needs a manual upload.

If you only need a website or a dashboard, Lovable or Bolt.new may be simpler and cheaper. If you want a real mobile app in the App Store and Google Play without learning the whole publishing process, CatDoes is a good place to start.

CatDoes vs Rork, what's your fav vibecoding tool?

Amber — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 19:07:51 +0000

I Finally Built My Own App, and I Still Can’t Write a Line of Code

Amber — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 19:07:02 +0000

For about three years I had a note on my phone titled “app ideas.” Most of it was nonsense, the kind of thing I’d type at midnight and not understand by morning. But one idea kept coming back, and it was almost embarrassing in how simple it was. I wanted one clean place to keep the recipes I actually cook, and a small website I could send to friends when they asked me for “that pasta thing” for the hundredth time.

That was the whole dream. A little app and a little site. And for three years I did absolutely nothing about it, because every time I looked into how, the answer was some version of “learn to code,” or “hire someone,” or “spend a weekend fighting with a tool that assumes you already know what a database is.”

I am not a technical person. I want to be honest about that up front, because I think a lot of these stories quietly skip past it. I do not know what a framework is. I have never used a terminal on purpose. When something on my computer breaks, my strategy is to restart it and hope. So this is not a “look how easy it is when you already sort of know your way around” story. This is the other one.
The part where I almost didn’t

I had poked at the no-code tools before. A couple of years ago I spent a long, joyless Sunday inside one of the drag-and-drop builders, the kind where you snap boxes together to make a screen. On paper it should have worked. In practice it felt like homework for a class I never signed up for. There were workflows and data types and little red error icons, and by the afternoon I had built roughly one screen that did nothing, and I closed the laptop and made an actual dinner instead.

So when a friend mentioned CatDoes, my first reaction was a very tired “sure.” I assumed it would be the same thing wearing a different outfit. I only tried it because it was late, I was procrastinating on something else, and typing a sentence felt like less effort than not typing one.

The thing that got me to keep going was that it did not ask me to learn anything first. There was no tutorial to sit through, no concepts to absorb before I was allowed to begin. It just asked me what I wanted to make. So I told it, in plain English, the way I’d describe it to a friend. Something like: an app where I can save recipes with a photo, tag them by how long they take, and mark the ones I’ve actually made.

Then it started building it.
What it was actually like

I want to describe this part carefully, because it’s the bit that genuinely surprised me.

It didn’t hand me a blank canvas and a hundred settings. It went and made a first version, and then I looked at it and told it what was wrong. “The photo should be bigger.” “Can the tags be at the top instead.” “I don’t like this color, make it warmer.” I was talking to it the same way I’d talk to a friend who happened to be very fast at this and never got annoyed with me. And it just did the things.

That changed the whole feeling of it. With the older tool I’d tried, I was the one who had to know how to build the thing. Here I was the one deciding what the thing should be, and the building happened on the other side. Those are very different jobs, and it turns out I am only qualified for one of them.

There were moments where it felt a little magical and I don’t fully trust that word, so let me be specific about one. I asked it to let me search my recipes by ingredient, which in my head was a “maybe next year” feature, the kind of thing I assumed real developers cried over. It added it. I typed “lemon” and my three lemon recipes showed up. I actually said “oh” out loud to an empty room.
The website happened almost by accident

I only set out to make the app. But once the recipes existed, sending people a screenshot felt silly, so I asked whether I could also have a simple website that showed the same recipes. I half expected to be told that was a separate project, or a different tool, or a different price of admission.

It just built the site too. Same recipes, laid out for a browser, with a real link I could send. A little while later I connected my own domain name to it, which is a sentence I could not have written a year ago and would not have understood if you’d read it to me.

That was the moment the whole thing tipped from “neat toy” into “wait, this is real.” I sent the link to my mum. She texted back a photo of the pasta. The loop closed.
What I want to be honest about

This is the part I’d want if I were reading this instead of writing it, so here it is without the shine.

It was not instant, and it was not effortless. It was fast in a way that genuinely startled me, but I still had to know what I wanted, and I still had to look at each version and decide what was off. If you don’t have a clear picture in your head of the thing you’re making, no amount of clever software will invent taste for you. It’s very good at building. It cannot want something on your behalf.

There were a couple of moments where a change I asked for did something to another part I liked, and I had to go back and say “no, keep the old version of that.” So it wasn’t a perfectly straight line. It was more like editing than typing. You write a messy first draft by describing it, then you shape it by reacting to what comes back.

And I’d gently push back on anyone who says tools like this mean nobody needs to think anymore. If anything I thought more, just about the right things. I spent my attention on what the app should feel like to use, instead of on why a button wouldn’t turn blue.
What actually changed

The app is not going to be in any headlines. It’s a recipe app that maybe forty people will ever open, and most of them are related to me. By any serious measure it is small.

But I made it. The thing that lived in a note for three years exists now, and I use it every week, and there’s a website with my name on the domain. For someone who had quietly filed “building your own app” under “things other people get to do,” that shift is hard to overstate.

I think that’s the part worth sitting with. It isn’t really about recipes, or about any one tool. It’s that the distance between “I wish this existed” and “this exists” got dramatically shorter for people like me, the ones who were never going to learn to code and had made a kind of peace with that. The peace turned out to be unnecessary.

So if you have your own version of that note on your phone, the one full of ideas you assume aren’t for you to build, I’d just say try describing one of them out loud to something that can build it. Worst case you lose an evening, which I was going to lose to scrolling anyway. Best case you say “oh” out loud to an empty room, and then you text your mum a link.

If you end up making something, I genuinely want to see it. Reply and show me.