Case study
Bookverse: language-learning app for iPhone, Android and the web
My own language-learning app, built solo end to end: one React Native and Expo codebase for iPhone, Android and the web, on my own backend, with an AI teacher. Live on the App Store and Google Play.
Overview
Bookverse is my own language-learning app: “a language learning app, built for the real language learners”. I built it on my own, end to end: the app, the backend, the servers and the store releases.
It is live on the App Store, on Google Play, and on the web at bookverse.com.
What I built
- One codebase for iPhone, Android and the web, in React Native and Expo.
- My own backend: TypeScript and Fastify on MongoDB, with logins, an admin area and analytics.
- An AI teacher to chat with while studying: language-model calls through LangGraph, with guardrails, and evaluations that score the answers.
- Speech: listening and speaking practice with text-to-speech and speech recognition.
- Releases: App Store and Google Play builds through Expo’s build service, and over-the-air updates for changes that don’t need a new build.
- Error reporting with Sentry, so I know when something breaks.
- My own servers, set up with Terraform and deployed by GitHub Actions.
The base it runs on (logins, admin screens, analytics and error reporting) is the same base my other apps start from.