Just Speak

Mobile app that records, transcribes and auto categorizes your words.

Three categories currently supported:

• Journal
• Reminders
• Todo lists

Tech stack

• Expo for the frontend
  • Expo router
  • React native paper for material design components
• Convex for the backend
• OpenAI for transcription and categorization

Getting started

Install dependencies

Use Node.js 24 LTS (nvm use reads .nvmrc), then run npm ci.

Create .env.local with the frontend configuration (both values are public):

EXPO_PUBLIC_CONVEX_URL=https://your-deployment.convex.cloud
CLERK_PUBLISHABLE_KEY=pk_test_your_publishable_key

Configure OPENAI_API_KEY in your Convex deployment, and update the Clerk issuer in convex/auth.config.js for your Clerk instance. The app uses Clerk's email/password flow with email-code verification and a Convex JWT template named convex.

Setup you Convex server

This is a terminal blocking command

npx convex dev

Run the frontend app via Expo

In a different terminal

npm run start

Dependency upgrade (September 2026)

The app now uses Expo SDK 57, React 19.2, React Native 0.86, Clerk Expo 4, Convex 1.45, and OpenAI 7. Expo-managed packages are pinned to SDK-compatible versions. Babel stays on 7.x and TypeScript on 6.0 because those are supported by this Expo release; npm outdated will show newer versions outside this tested SDK set.

Recording and playback now use expo-audio with microphone permissions in app.json. Clerk uses @clerk/expo, its maintained secure token cache, and the current password/verification APIs. Rebuild existing native development clients before running this version.

Validation commands:

npm run ts:check
npx expo install --check
npx expo-doctor
npx expo export --platform all

The upgrade passed frontend/backend type checks, all 21 Expo Doctor checks, and production bundle exports for iOS, Android, and web. Bundle validation used placeholder public configuration; device testing with real credentials is still needed for sign-up, sign-in, session persistence, microphone denial, record/stop/replay, upload, transcription, and categorization. Native app compilation and authenticated end-to-end flows have not been validated.

The live dev watcher was also verified against neighborly-leopard-798. Expo served the sign-in page at http://localhost:8081 without browser errors, the Clerk issuer matched the backend auth config, and a live unauthenticated notes query was correctly rejected. The frontend reads EXPO_PUBLIC_CONVEX_URL, which convex dev writes to .env.local.

npm audit reports 27 moderate findings in the latest upstream dependency tree, with no high or critical findings. These originate from uuid and stream-json under Expo/Clerk dependencies, and decode-uri-component under Expo Router. Resolving them requires upstream fixes or incompatible dependency changes; do not use npm audit fix --force to downgrade the Expo stack.

Upgrade references: Expo SDK 57, Expo Audio, and Clerk upgrade guide.

Questions?

Chat with @Indy at Convex discord community

Ideas on what's next

• Significantly improve UI
  • Switch from React Native Paper to Tamagui?
• Make multiple offline recordings to be uploaded when back online
• Make this truly cross platform with React Native / Expo Web
• Actually use system notifications for reminders
• Push notifications from server to tell you when categorization is done
• Package a real Android app to use properly
• Package a real iOS app to use properly
• AI to make suggestions to journal entry for publishing as blog post

Known bugs

• Reminder times are all in UTC. The AI might not be doing this right either.