Mobile development is the discipline where every shortcut shows up on a real device. A layout that snaps on a Pixel will overflow on an older iPhone SE. An animation that runs at 120fps on a developer laptop simulator will stutter on a mid-range Android. A push token that works on iOS staging will silently fail on a TestFlight build because of a forgotten entitlement. The skills below cover the actual pipeline a mobile engineer ships against — production architecture for cross-platform apps, native UI conventions for both stores, the on-simulator test loop that catches regressions before TestFlight, and the accessibility and debugging discipline that separates an app that passes review from an app that passes real usage. All from verified plugins with real commit history and real star counts on GitHub.
From the frontend-mobile-development plugin (35,732 stars). Builds production React Native apps with Expo, navigation, native modules, offline sync, and cross-platform patterns. The skill encodes the architectural decisions that bite teams six months in — when to eject from Expo, how to structure native modules so they survive an iOS upgrade, where to put the offline sync layer so the same code path serves both stores, and how to lay out navigation so deep links and push payloads land on the right screen.
When to use: at project kickoff for any new React Native app, and at every major rewrite milestone — adding offline support, integrating a native SDK, or migrating from React Navigation 5 to 6. Pair it with the core frontend-developer skill stack when the same team owns both web and mobile and the component library needs to span both.
From the ui-design plugin (35,732 stars). Masters iOS Human Interface Guidelines and SwiftUI patterns for building native iOS apps — interface design, SwiftUI view composition, and the Apple-specific conventions that App Store reviewers actually flag. The difference between an app that feels iOS-native and one that feels like a ported web app lives in dozens of small decisions: navigation bar height, haptics on confirm, sheet detents, dynamic type scaling, and the exact corner radius on a destructive action.
When to use: any time you are writing SwiftUI, before submitting an update with new UI to App Store Review, or when a designer hands over a Figma file that needs translation into idiomatic SwiftUI rather than a literal pixel-for-pixel port. It also closes the most common review-rejection vector: interfaces that ignore HIG conventions for navigation, modals, or settings.
Also from ui-design. Masters Material Design 3 and Jetpack Compose patterns for building native Android apps. Where iOS rewards aesthetic restraint, Android rewards correct system integration — themed dynamic color, edge-to-edge insets, predictive back, large-screen and foldable layouts, and the Compose-specific patterns that keep recomposition costs down on mid-range hardware.
When to use: any time you are writing Jetpack Compose, when porting a SwiftUI design to Android (resist the urge to ship a literal copy), or when targeting newer Android features like Material You theming, predictive back gestures, or foldable-aware layouts. Pair it with the iOS skill above when the same product ships to both stores from a shared design system — the skill helps decide what to keep platform-consistent and what to make platform-idiomatic.
Also from ui-design. Masters React Native styling, navigation, and Reanimated animations for cross-platform mobile development. Where react-native-architecture covers the structural decisions, this skill covers the visual and motion layer — the StyleSheet patterns that survive Hermes, the Reanimated 3 worklets that hit 60fps on Android, and the navigation transitions that feel native on both stores without forking the codebase.
From the compound-engineering plugin (17,027 stars). Builds and tests iOS apps on the simulator using XcodeBuildMCP — the on-simulator verify loop that turns "I think it compiles" into "I have a screenshot of the green path on iPhone 15 Pro." Catches crashes, regressions, and behavioral diffs before they reach TestFlight, which is the cheapest place to find an iOS bug by an order of magnitude.
When to use: after every meaningful change to iOS code, before opening a PR with UI changes, and whenever a bug report includes the phrase "only on iOS." The simulator is not a real device, but it catches the 80 percent of issues — startup crashes, layout bugs at common screen sizes, broken navigation, and async logic that races on cold launch — that should never make it to a tester's phone.
Also from ui-design. Implements WCAG 2.2 compliant interfaces with mobile accessibility, inclusive design patterns, and assistive technology support — screen reader labels, dynamic type, sufficient contrast, large touch targets, focus order, and the platform-specific accessibility APIs (VoiceOver on iOS, TalkBack on Android) that App Store and Play Store reviewers can and do reject apps over.
When to use: before any release to either store, when adding new screens that contain forms or interactive controls, and any time a screen reader test surfaces unlabeled elements. Mobile accessibility is also one of the only places where a single fix — a proper accessibilityLabel or contentDescription — lifts a feature from unusable to fully functional for a meaningful slice of your users. It also reduces store-rejection risk in jurisdictions that now treat accessibility as a legal-compliance requirement, not a nice-to-have.
From the flagship superpowers plugin (200,364 stars). Forces a methodical debugging process — observe, hypothesize, isolate, verify — before proposing any fix. For mobile developers this is the antidote to the worst category of bugs in the discipline: the device-specific crash that happens in production, never reproduces on the simulator, and has a stack trace that points into a vendor SDK. Pair it with the QA-engineer toolkit when the bug needs to be reproduced and ticketed before it can be fixed.
When to use: any time a crash report from Crashlytics or Sentry is intermittent, any time the first three theories about a layout bug were wrong, and any time a behavior diverges between iOS and Android in a way that suggests a platform-specific edge case in shared code. The skill enforces the discipline that senior mobile engineers do by habit — narrow the repro, isolate the variable, verify the fix on both stores — and that newer engineers skip under deadline pressure.
How to install
Each skill lives inside a plugin. Add the plugin marketplace once, then install with a single command. The skill detail page on Skill Index has the exact install string and a copy button.
If you are starting a new mobile app and adding Claude Code skills for the first time, the highest-ROI first install is the frontend-mobile-development plugin (you get react-native-architecture, react-state-management, and the cross-platform foundations) plus ui-design for the native conventions (mobile-ios-design, mobile-android-design, react-native-design, accessibility-compliance), then compound-engineering for ce-test-xcode and the on-simulator verify loop, and finally superpowers for systematic-debugging as the discipline layer underneath every crash report. Pair the output with the rest of the thicket toolkit — standalone page screenshots via capture.thicket.sh, mobile-flow QR codes for handing test builds across devices via qr.thicket.sh, and timeboxed device-test sessions via focus.thicket.sh — and the iOS-to-Android-to-store-review pipeline becomes a half-day instead of a week.