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Unlock the Perfect Workflow for Vibe Coding React Native Expo Apps

AI LABS • 2025-05-04 • 6:02 minutes • YouTube

🤖 AI-Generated Summary:

Streamlining Mobile App Development with TempoLabs and Cursor: A New Workflow for Expo Apps

Building mobile apps can often be a complex and time-consuming process, especially when it comes to planning, designing, and coding. However, recent advancements in AI-powered development tools are transforming the way developers approach app creation. In this post, we explore an innovative workflow that leverages TempoLabs and Cursor to build Expo apps efficiently, from concept to functional prototype.

Introducing TempoLabs and Cursor

TempoLabs is an AI-powered builder specifically optimized for creating React applications, including Expo apps. Its standout feature lies in automating the generation of key project documents such as the Product Requirements Document (PRD) and user flow diagrams, enabling a solid foundation for app development.

Cursor, on the other hand, is a coding environment that integrates seamlessly with TempoLabs. It allows developers to refine and extend their projects locally with context-aware AI assistance, preserving the structure generated by TempoLabs while giving developers control over the code.

The Workflow: From Idea to App

1. Defining the App with TempoLabs

The process begins by providing TempoLabs with a detailed prompt describing the app’s desired functionality—not technical specifications, but user requirements. For example, the video walkthrough demonstrates building a mood tracker app using the Expo framework.

Once the prompt is submitted, TempoLabs automatically generates:

  • Product Requirements Document (PRD): A comprehensive outline of essential app features and functionalities.
  • User Flow Diagram: A mermaid diagram that visually maps out the app’s navigation, interactions, and animations.

This approach helps clarify the app experience early on, making collaboration easier for teams where designers and developers can work in parallel.

2. Visualizing the Design

TempoLabs then creates wireframes and storyboards based on the PRD and user flow. These storyboard sections correspond to individual screens and components, allowing you to see the app's layout in real time. This visual representation aids in verifying the app’s structure and flow before diving into code.

3. Transitioning to Cursor for Development

If you prefer hands-on coding or need to customize the app further, TempoLabs supports local editing through an extension compatible with editors like Cursor. After installing the TempoLabs extension in Cursor and linking it to your project, you can:

  • Import the entire app codebase via SSH.
  • Access the PRD and user flow documentation directly within your project folder.
  • Continue building and refining the app with the help of Cursor’s AI capabilities, which understand the project context.

This integration maintains a two-way sync between TempoLabs and Cursor, ensuring changes remain consistent across platforms.

4. Building and Debugging the App

In the demo, the mood tracker app was expanded using Cursor with the Gemini 2.5 Pro AI model. Although some minor UI bugs appeared—such as dark mode inconsistencies—these were quickly fixed by prompting TempoLabs’ AI agent, showcasing the power of collaboration between these tools.

The app runs smoothly on mobile devices via the Expo Go app, demonstrating real-world functionality including mood logging and theme switching.

Beyond Expo: Expanding Your Development Possibilities

TempoLabs is not limited to Expo apps. It also supports full Next.js web applications and provides preconfigured integrations for authentication, databases, and payments using popular services like Supabase and Stripe. This makes TempoLabs an excellent choice for quickly launching SaaS products or complex web apps.

For those interested, there’s a dedicated tutorial on setting up a SaaS business with TempoLabs, highlighting how to connect these integrations seamlessly.

Why Use TempoLabs and Cursor Together?

  • Faster Planning and Iteration: TempoLabs automates the heavy lifting of transforming ideas into detailed specs, flows, and wireframes in minutes.
  • Context-Aware Development: Cursor enables local code refinement without losing the AI-generated structure, reducing bugs and improving consistency.
  • Collaboration-Friendly: The workflow supports multiple contributors, from designers to developers, enhancing team productivity.
  • Flexible and Scalable: Works well for both mobile (Expo) and web (Next.js) apps, including complex integrations.

Final Thoughts

Combining TempoLabs and Cursor creates a powerful synergy that accelerates the app development lifecycle. By automating early planning and design stages and providing a smooth transition to AI-assisted coding, developers can launch apps faster and with greater confidence.

If you’re building React-based apps and want to reduce the friction between idea and implementation, this workflow is definitely worth exploring.


If you found this post helpful, consider subscribing for more insights on AI-powered development tools. For ongoing support, donations are welcomed via the link below. Happy coding!


📝 Transcript (165 entries):

In this video, I'm showing you a new workflow to build mobile apps, specifically Expo apps. We'll be using TempoLabs, a solid AI powered builder that excels in building React apps. Along with that, we'll also use Cursor. I'll walk you through how and why you should start in TempoLabs. It generates your PRD and user flow, which helps shape a better experience for your app's users. Now, here is how cursor comes into the workflow. If you don't want to code directly in Tempo Labs or prefer making changes yourself, you can open the project in cursor. From there, you can create context instructions and continue building. Right now, I'm here in Tempo and I'm giving it the prompt to build the app. It's a pretty extensive prompt. I generated the app details on how it should function, not the technical parts, just my requirements and gave them to Tempo Labs. I've selected the Expo framework here and I'll give it the prompt. It's setting up the project. The first thing it starts with is the PRD. You can see that the PRD has been generated. Once that's done, it generates the user flow. This is where Tempo Lab stands out in a creative workflow compared to something like Cursor or Windsurf. It's because of what it can do. It's a builder made for React apps and it specializes in them. Since that's its focus, it performs better when it comes to planning, designing, and linking everything. If you want to collaborate with someone else, for example, if you're only handling the design and someone else is going to build the app, you can link it with their editor. Now that the PRD is ready, I'm reading through it and they've outlined the essential features we need. If you open the user flow, you'll see how the whole experience is structured. When the app opens, the user sees the home screen and from there, everything connects. Every interaction is laid out, even down to the animations. All the routes are listed as well. The mermaid diagram makes the user experience clear. You can also edit it by just asking the agent. It's that easy. The development server is starting now. Expo apps take a little time to boot up. Once it's ready, it'll generate designs from the PRD. Open up the storyboard, create the designs, and link them. You'll see exactly how the app will look. Let me show you the design tab. You can see it's building out all the sections on the storyboard in real time. It starts putting them together one by one. These wireframes are generated based on our PRD and the mermaid diagram. Now you can see the storyboards haven't fully generated yet. We've got the main homepage here and the settings panel next to it. They're also divided into components. The entire app has been laid out on the storyboard. If you want to continue in cursor or wind surf, here's what you'll do next. Now you'll see a little icon called local editing. Open it up. The first thing you'll notice is that it asks you to install an extension. Go to your editor. For this video, I'm using cursor. Open the extensions tab and search for TempoLabs. You'll see the TempoLabs extension right there. Open it and install it. The extension is now installed. Next, choose the editor you want to use from this tab. I'll choose Cursor. Open it up. Allow the connection and it'll link to your editor. It opens up a new app and connects through SSH, which is pretty cool. Now the app is imported into cursor and we can start building right here. Now that I have the app open, this is how I continue building. I copy the entire PRD along with the mermaid diagram and drop it into a docs folder I've created. Inside that folder, I've added a PRD markdown file where I've pasted both the PRD and the mermaid diagram. It's already formatted and you also don't need to do that manually. Just ask cursor to do it or drop both into chat GPT and have it formatted automatically. Once it's done, cursor can easily access it and understands the full context. Another great part of this sync is that it works both ways. As you can see, the docs folder I created also appears in tempo. Now, we're ready to continue building the expo app. Now, you can see the app has been built. It's a simple mood tracker made with Expo. I used a prompt to ask cursor to build it. It read the PRD and continued the process according to that. I was using Gemini 2.5 Pro, so there weren't many issues. There were a few UI errors though. For example, when I enable dark mode, you can see that the app changes the theme, but initially this whole section didn't adapt to the change. I tried fixing it in cursor with Gemini 2.5, but it didn't work. In the end, I just prompted Tempo Labs AI agent and it fixed the issue. It's clear tempo is really solid for Reactbased tasks. The app is now functional. You can open any day section you want and log on the mood that you are feeling for that day. There are still a few small UI bugs to sort out, but everything works. One thing to note, the pinch functionality doesn't work on my desktop. I loaded the app on my mobile using the Expo Go app, and it worked fine there. It was also much smoother. The jittering you see here wasn't present on my phone. The good thing about Tempo Labs is that it lets you build more than just Expo apps. You can also create full Nex.js web apps with it. It comes with preconfigured integrations like authentication, database, and payments using popular tools such as Superbase and Stripe. It gives you a quick start if you're setting up a SAS business. We've also made a dedicated video that walks you through setting up a SAS with TempoLabs and connecting these integrations, so make sure to check that out, too. Tempo Labs does the heavy lifting, turning your idea into specs, flows, and wireframes in minutes. Cursor then lets you refine the code locally without breaking that AI generated structure. Together, they cut planning and iteration time to near zero, so you launch apps faster and with more confidence. That's it for this video. If you liked it, please consider subscribing. If you want us to keep making these videos, please consider donating using the link below. Thanks as always for watching and I'll see you in the next video.