A working app in Expo Go deceives you. You see your components rendered on your phone, the state syncs, navigation feels native, images load — and you think you're done. Ship it, right? Every first-time builder hits the same unspoken wall: what shows up in Expo Go is not a real app in the App Store or Play Store. That last 10% — the actual mobile deploy — is where side projects go to die. Most templates punt entirely, or leave you to stitch together deploy guides full of missing steps and platform traps. The OTF Fitness kit ships the deploy scripts and configs up front, closing the build gap that kills most cross-platform ambition. One line. It shows up on your homescreen with your icon, your name, ready for TestFlight, ready for review. Here’s what you actually face, and why offloading that last mile matters more than any demo.
The real wall: local preview ≠ shipped app
Developers new to cross-platform React see Expo Go’s QR code as the finish line. Not even close. Running this command:
npx create-expo-app my-workout
cd my-workout
