Show HN: Shipvo – open-source RN OTA updates and an AI-drivable simulator

One React Native app, two places it runs. People get a native Android or iOS app from the stores, kept current with signed over-the-air updates. AI agents get the same release in a phone-sized simulator they can see and operate over MCP, with no device, including native features (camera, location, biometrics, payments, notifications). Every claim about the simulator is measured against real Android and iOS and published.

Shipvo was briefly called PureNative. The hosted control plane is api.shipvo.dev and the hosted simulator sim.shipvo.dev; the older purenative.workers.dev addresses keep answering for apps whose shell was built against them.

Three pillars:

1. Publish. Signed OTA updates (64 KB patches, crash-loop rollback, staged rollouts), a built-in owner admin at/app/<id>/admin , and a control plane you can self-host on Cloudflare.
2. Simulate.@shipvo/mcp opens any Shipvo app for an agent: accessibility tree with refs, tap/type/scroll/back, screenshots.@shipvo/device gives apps one device API, real on phones and simulated in the simulator, with Android- and iOS-worded system sheets the agent answers like a person. Simulation is explicit: every simulated event is logged as simulated and no simulated payment or fingerprint is ever presented as real.
3. Verify. The parity harness runs the same flows on the simulator, an Android emulator and an iPhone simulator and compares every screen. Current result: 100% actionable parity on Android and iOS across the 13-screen purchase flows; on the native-feature flow, 18 of 21 screens match at 100% on Android (the three gaps are listed) and 100% on iOS, with the orders themselves compared (docs/parity-results.md , which also says exactly what the score does and does not measure).

Website · Docs · Blog · Shipvo vs Expo · Pricing

Status: pre-launch, measured. OTA numbers come from a real low-end phone (Redmi 9A, 2 GB RAM): docs/spike-results.md. Agent results: docs/agent-gate-results.md. Simulator-vs-device parity: docs/parity-results.md. Native-feature parity (camera, location, permissions, payment prompt) is measured on Android; iOS is next. The iOS OTA runtime is verified on the iOS Simulator in CI (fetch, verify, stage, reload, cold start); physical iPhones are not yet measured.

Every change to a native mobile app normally means a new build, a store submission, a review, and then waiting for users to update. Many never do. Shipvo separates what has to go through the store from what doesn't:

Updates are interpreted JavaScript running on native capabilities the shell declares up front. The app never asks for a permission it hasn't declared.

• Signed OTA updates: Ed25519 signatures, verified natively on the device against a public key built into the app. An update can't replace its own trust root.
• Integrity checks: SHA-256 and size are verified before a bundle is staged; staging is atomic.
• Crash-loop protection: a release that fails to boot 3 times is discarded automatically, and you can roll back to the previous release in one call.
• Staged rollouts: cohort bands (1%, 10%, everyone) served as static signed pointers from the edge, with no device registry.
• Telemetry for every release: applied, reverted, cold-start time, download size and time.
• Control plane on Cloudflare Workers: KV, D1 and R2. It's self-hostable, with a Docker target planned.
• Admin per app at/app/<id>/admin : live content, prices, offers, orders, history, publish to every phone in seconds; the same typed owner commands are available to agents with a token.
• Agent-operable apps: every app exposes typed commands and a UI simulator;@shipvo/mcp plugs both into Claude, Cursor, Claude Code or PiPilot.
• Simulated device:@shipvo/device runs camera, location, biometrics, payments, notifications, share and network on phones (Expo modules) and in the simulator (system sheets in the accessibility tree, state set by the agent). Each capability declares its support level: real, simulated or unavailable.
• Design skill: a runnable theme generator, screen checker and anti-generic lint inskills/shipvo-design .

npx -y @shipvo/cli init myshop && cd myshop && npm install && npx playwright install chromium
npm run sim                      # the app in the simulator; agents: open_app("myshop") through @shipvo/mcp
npx expo run:android             # the native shell; `shipvo publish` ships changes over the air

Guides: Build your first app · Device API · Agents and MCP · Self-hosting the control plane · measured results: OTA on a 2 GB phone, simulator vs device parity, agent gate.

Add the MCP server to Claude, Claude Code, Cursor or PiPilot:

{ "mcpServers": { "shipvo": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "@shipvo/mcp"] } } }

Then: open_app("tide@latest") returns a phone-sized session and the first screen as an accessibility tree with refs; tap, type, scroll, back and screenshot act on it; set_device decides what the phone has (a barcode in front of the camera, a location, whether the fingerprint matches, whether a payment is approved, network off); device_log reports every device event, all marked simulated; end_session returns the steps taken and the orders the app sent. tide@r13 opens exactly the release phones are running; tide opens a local build. Full tool list: packages/mcp/README.md.

What the agent sees is what a person with a screen reader would: only the items of a rail that are on screen (swipe to see more), nothing behind a modal sheet, system dialogs worded as Android or iOS word them.

shipvo publish              Build Hermes bundle → SHA-256 → bsdiff patches → sign pointer (Ed25519)
        │                   Build web artifact of the same commit (platform adapters only)
        ▼
Cloudflare edge             /p/{app}/{shell_major}/{band}.json   (signed envelope, ETag)
        │                   /b/{app}/r{release}.hbc              (immutable bundle, bsdiff patches)
        │                   /w/{app}/r{release}/                 (the same release for agents)
        ├──────────────────────────────┐
        ▼                              ▼
Device runtime (Kotlin)        Simulator / sim.shipvo.dev
verify → download → verify     open_app("tide@r13") → accessibility tree
→ stage → reload → healthy     → tap/type/scroll → device sheets → report
or revert after 3 failed boots
        ▼
Telemetry                   POST /t → D1;  orders POST /o/{app} → D1

1. Download the latest tide-and-tackle-shell.apk fromReleases and install it on an Android 7+ phone.
2. Edit apps/tide-and-tackle/src/release.ts and runshipvo publish (or push tomain and let thepublish-ota workflow do it). It signs and publishes the release.
3. The app checks every 10 seconds while open, verifies the update, applies it, and logs the timings on screen.
4. Change prices or the home screen at /app/tide/admin on your control plane; the phone shows it in about 10 seconds.
5. Open the same release as an agent: cd apps/tide-and-tackle && pnpm sim , thenopen_app("tide@latest") through@shipvo/mcp , orscripts/ui screen from a terminal.

pnpm install
pnpm -r test
pnpm --filter @shipvo/control-plane dev

Requires Node 22 and pnpm 10.

Shipvo sits alongside tools like Expo Updates (EAS Update) and self-hosted CodePush servers, which replaced Microsoft App Center CodePush after it was retired in 2025. What Shipvo adds: a declared-capability shell manifest, signed add-ons, a per-app admin, cohort rollouts from static edge files, and apps that AI agents can operate.

Framework: Apache-2.0. The hosted control plane may be offered under a source-available license; self-hosting stays permitted.