React Native renders real native views — so what does "native" actually mean when you build with it today?

This talk traces how native code evolved across the React Native and Expo ecosystem: from Expo Go's bundled runtime and its tradeoffs, through Continuous Native Generation and the declarative Expo Modules API, to local and inline modules that finally let Swift and Kotlin live right next to your TypeScript.

We'll see how the Expo Modules API replaces bridge plumbing with a clean API — async functions as JS Promises, typed records and enums, and events — and go through the full capability spectrum from plain JS components to native primitives.

Then we bring AI into the loop: how agents can write the native code for you, why colocated inline modules make that practical, and where the real constraints still are. You'll leave understanding how React Native is as native as you need it to be — business logic written once, dropping to native only where it counts.