# Bareship: an offline-first React Native template for teams and AI agents
> Why I built Bareship, a bare React Native 0.87 template with offline writes that survive a restart, an architecture the linter enforces, and rules your AI coding agent follows. It runs with no accounts.
By Praveen Singh · Published 22 October 2026 · 4 min read
Canonical: https://www.praveensingh.co.in/blog/introducing-bareship
Code and raw results: https://github.com/psingh2907/bareship
Tags: React Native, Open source, Offline-first
**Short answer:** Bareship is a free, MIT-licensed template for bare React Native 0.87 apps. One command, `npx create-bareship Acme`, gives you an iOS and Android app where a like or an edit made offline is saved, survives a restart and is sent once when the phone reconnects; where the folder rules are checked by ESLint instead of code review; and where Claude Code, Cursor or Copilot get the same rules as your team. It runs with no backend, Firebase project or Apple account until you need them.
## Why another template?
Every new React Native app I've started began the same way: a week or two rebuilding the plumbing before the
first real feature. A queue for writes made without signal, somewhere safe for the auth token, folder rules
everyone agrees on and nobody checks. Each time I built them a little differently, and each time the gaps showed
up later, in a bug report from a user with a bad connection or in a feature folder that had quietly started
importing from three others. I wanted to make those decisions once, properly, and start from there.
Most starters get you to a running screen fast. The parts that cost time later are the ones a demo never
touches: what happens to a write when the phone has no signal, where the auth token lives, and whether the
folder structure you agreed on in week one still holds in month six, with three developers and a coding agent
all adding code. Bareship is my answer to those, decided once and written down.
## What happens when the phone goes offline?
Every write in the app picks one of four patterns, so a user always knows what became of what they did:
| Pattern | Without a connection | Use it for |
| --- | --- | --- |
| A | The change appears at once and is sent later | Low-stakes toggles |
| B | The change appears at once, marked "Waiting to sync" | Likes, comments, edits |
| C | The form is disabled, with a note saying why | Sign-in, payments |
| D | The content is replaced by an offline message | Account deletion, checkout |
Queued writes are saved to disk, replayed in the order they were made after a restart, and carry one
idempotency key for every attempt, so a write sent twice is applied once. A banner under the header counts the
changes waiting to sync. A write that picks no pattern fails at once offline, so nothing is queued by accident.
## Rules the build enforces
The architecture is in the linter, not a wiki page. Layers import downward only, features can't reach into each
other's files, text on screen must go through translations, and accessibility uses one set of ARIA props
everywhere. ESLint and dependency-cruiser fail the check otherwise. When a rule is wrong for your app, you change it
in one place and write down why: the decisions behind the template are kept as ADRs in the repo.
## Built for AI coding agents
The repo ships an `AGENTS.md`, its decision records and React Native agent skills, plus generators
(`pnpm gen feature | screen | endpoint`) that write a schema, API hooks, a mock, strings and a test the way the
rest of the code does. An agent that follows them writes code that passes the same checks as your team's.
I built much of Bareship with Claude Code, so these files were tested on an agent from the start: when it broke
a rule, the fix went into the linter or `AGENTS.md`, not into a comment on a pull request.
## It runs with no accounts
The dev build serves sample data from a mock backend inside the app, so you can sign in, scroll the feed and
test offline mode on a simulator or a phone before any backend exists. Crashlytics, Analytics, Remote Config and
push turn on when you add a Firebase file and fall back to logging without one. Tokens are stored in the
Keychain and Keystore from day one.
Also included: light and dark themes, English and Hindi (with right-to-left support you can switch on), deep
links, force-update and maintenance screens, environments for dev, staging and prod, fastlane release lanes and
a demo build you can install on a phone.
## Try it
```bash
npx create-bareship Acme
cd Acme
pnpm android # or: pnpm ios
```
`create-bareship` checks your tools first, asks for a bundle id and display name, installs everything and makes
the first commit.
The first Android build compiles the native libraries and takes a while (about 20 minutes on my 8 GB M1, a few
minutes on a faster machine); builds after that are quick.
## What's next
Bareship is at 0.3.2. Next on the list: turning CI back on in the repository, and a series of posts on how the
pieces work, starting with the offline queue and idempotency keys. If it saves you a week, a star on GitHub helps
other people find it, and issues are the best way to tell me what's missing.
## Takeaways
- npx create-bareship Acme creates a bare React Native 0.87 app for iOS and Android in one command.
- Each write picks one of four offline patterns; queued writes survive a restart and are applied once.
- Layers, feature boundaries, translations and accessibility are enforced by ESLint and dependency-cruiser.
- AGENTS.md, ADRs, skills and generators give AI coding agents the same rules as your team.
- It runs with no backend, Firebase or Apple account; you add each service when you need it.