DevMate: Accelerating React Native Development at Atlassian

This post introduces DevMate, an in-house CLI tool designed to accelerate React Native development at Atlassian. It details the challenges faced during the Confluence Mobile app migration, including complex environment setup, inconsistent workflows, long build times, and cross-platform testing friction. The solution, DevMate, is presented with its core features: automated environment setup using a dependency chain and common interface, intelligent dependency management via file hashing, and smart build skipping by tracking native file modification times. The technical implementation is described using TypeScript and Bash, highlighting patterns like dependency interfaces, two-tier hash-based change detection, and platform abstraction. The impact is measured through reductions in onboarding time, build times, dependency-related errors, and improvements in developer satisfaction.