I vibe-coded my dead app Flinder back to life

Back in 2017, I built a React Native app called Flinder. It's been dead ever since.

Last week, I tried to revive it and… wow. It was completely broken (ancient dependencies, deprecated APIs, client-side token exposure, a React Native version dating back ages,..). Getting it running again felt impossible without a huge refactor.

So I decided to vibe-code the whole thing using ChatGPT Codex. The goal was to bring it up to speed with the latest Expo SDK and make it build again.

Here is what happened:

• Codex installed Expo SDK v50 (not the latest version..)
• It didn't follow upgrade guides
• Still, it rewrote all class components to functional ones flawlessly
• Handled tons of small refactors surprisingly well
• But for bigger changes, it got confused fast

The best results came from small, focused tasks. Asking Codex to “Refactor everything to the latest Expo. Make no mistakes.” in one go? Nope, way too messy.

Bottom line: I'd never attempt this manually. AI coding agents aren't perfect, but they make projects like this manageable again. Flinder is now back alive so thank you bots!