Overview

Hostly is an AI-powered proptech app helping short-term rental hosts improve their listings with data-driven redesign recommendations.

Hosts can upload listing photos or take new photos from their phone, then receive an AI-generated score, redesign direction, and practical recommendations for improving the space. The goal is to help hosts make better decisions before investing in photographers, furniture, or renovations.

I am building Hostly as Founder & Senior Mobile Engineer, owning the mobile app, product direction, backend foundation, and App Store release while working closely with my partner, a product designer, to shape the user experience.

The Challenge

Short-term rental hosts often make redesign decisions based on intuition, competitor listings, or expensive trial and error.

The product needed to turn photo-based listing analysis into a simple mobile experience that could help hosts understand what to improve, why it matters, and how to prioritize changes before spending money on physical upgrades.

The app needed to:

• Allow hosts to upload listing photos or capture new photos from the camera
• Analyze listing visuals and return an AI-generated score
• Generate redesign direction and practical improvement recommendations
• Translate AI output into clear, host-friendly guidance
• Manage subscription access through RevenueCat
• Track analytics and attribution for early growth experiments
• Ship as a production iOS app while keeping the architecture flexible for future AI workflows

The Solution

I built a dedicated mobile experience with React Native, Expo, and TypeScript, using Expo Router to structure app flows and keep navigation scalable as the product evolves.

The app lets hosts upload or capture photos of their rental spaces, then turns those images into an AI-powered score, redesign direction, and actionable recommendations. The experience is designed to make listing optimization feel simple and useful, even for hosts without design or hospitality expertise.

On the backend side, I built the data foundation with Prisma ORM, Neon PostgreSQL, and Better Auth, supporting user accounts, photo-based analysis flows, AI-generated results, and subscription-aware product access.

The result is a live App Store product with a mobile-first foundation, production analytics, attribution tracking, RevenueCat subscriptions, OTA delivery, and a flexible architecture ready for deeper AI-powered listing optimization features.

Key Features

Core mobile features included:

• Photo upload and camera capture for rental spaces
• AI-generated listing score
• Redesign direction and practical recommendations
• Subscription-based access with RevenueCat
• Analytics and attribution for early growth experiments

Technical Highlights

The app uses Expo Router for native navigation and a file-based routing model that keeps product flows easy to extend as Hostly grows.

Server state is handled with TanStack React Query, supporting caching, synchronization, and clean request lifecycle management across photo analysis and authenticated user flows.

Native integrations include RevenueCat, Vexo Analytics, Singular attribution, OTA Updates, EAS Build, image upload, and camera/photo access.

The backend uses Prisma ORM with Neon PostgreSQL for typed relational data modeling and storage, while Better Auth handles authentication. This keeps the backend lightweight, maintainable, and easy to evolve as the product moves from early validation into more advanced AI-powered listing intelligence.

Mobile Architecture

Hostly is a React Native / Expo app built with a modular feature-based architecture. It separates screens, shared UI components, hooks, API queries, services, and domain models into dedicated layers.

Server state is handled with TanStack React Query for caching, synchronization, and request lifecycle management. Native concerns such as subscriptions, analytics, attribution, OTA delivery, and release workflows are composed through dedicated service modules.

Backend Architecture

Hostly uses a lightweight backend architecture designed around typed data access, authentication, and scalable relational storage.

Prisma ORM handles the data layer, Neon provides serverless PostgreSQL infrastructure, and Better Auth manages authentication flows. The backend supports user accounts, photo-based listing analysis, AI-generated scores, redesign recommendations, and subscription-aware access.