Originally published on expo.dev/blog
By Erencan Arica

A few years ago, launching a React Native app meant weeks of setup configuring Xcode, managing signing certificates, wrestling with Android Gradle configs, and cobbling together a CI/CD pipeline from scratch. Today, with Expo, a solo developer can go from idea to a production-ready native app in a single afternoon. It's a dream. And that's before we even mention LLMs.

But speed creates a new problem: when shipping is fast, the bottleneck shifts. It's no longer building the app, it's getting it found.

That's where App Store Optimization comes in.

Why shipping fast made App Store discovery harder

Here's the tension: Expo makes is easier for everyone to ship an app and now the App Store has over 2 million apps competing for attention. Paid acquisition costs have risen over 30% year-over-year, making organic discovery more important than ever.

And here's the stat that changes everything: 65–70% of app downloads still come from App Store search.

Not ads. Not social media. Not influencers. Search.

If your app doesn't rank for the right keywords, most of your potential users will never see it regardless of how polished the product is. Great apps with poor store listings get buried. Mediocre apps with excellent ASO get downloaded.

What is App Store Optimization (ASO)?

Before going deeper, I want to explain what App Store Optimization (ASO) actually means. ASO is the practice of optimizing your app to rank higher in App Store or Play Store search results tp attract more users to install.

Think of it as SEO, but for the App Store. The principles are similar: understand what your users are searching for, then make sure your listing reflects it clearly and accurately.

There are key elements of ASO:

• Title (30 chars): Your strongest ranking signal. A core keyword in the title can lift rankings by up to 10%.

• Subtitle (30 chars, iOS): A secondary ranking signal. Complement your title with different keywords, both fields are indexed together.

• Keyword Field (100 chars, iOS): Hidden from users, fully indexed by Apple. No spaces after commas, no duplicates from your title, no filler words.

• Screenshots: No longer just a conversion tool. With Apple's semantic search, the text in your screenshots is indexed and affects your ranking directly. Users decide in ~7 seconds, so lead with your value prop, use keyword-rich captions, and show real UI.

• Ratings & Reviews: A direct ranking factor. Prompt at the right moment, after a user achieves something, not on first launch.

• Localization: Each locale gets its own keyword field, title, and screenshots. Most developers only do English and leave massive markets untapped.

ASO is not a one-time task. Algorithms evolve, competitors iterate, new keywords emerge. The best teams treat it as an ongoing practice, not a launch checklist. It’s best to revisit your listings each month. That’s why I came up with open-source ASO agent skills with real-time data.

ASO Skills: bringing App Store Optimization into your AI workflow

This is the problem I wanted to solve when I built ASO Skills, an open-source collection of AI agent skills for App Store Optimization and mobile app marketing.

The idea is simple: package ASO expertise directly into the tools you already use.

Whether you're working in Cursor, Claude Code, Codex or any Agent Skills-compatible environment, you can ask your AI assistant to run a full ASO audit, research keywords, analyze competitors, and generate optimized metadata, and get structured, actionable results backed by real App Store data.

The library ships with 20+ skills across three areas. But what makes them powerful isn't the individual skills, it's how they work together. Each skill is aware of the others, so instead of running isolated commands, you get a natural, guided workflow:

aso-audit
   → flags weak spots in your listing
   → recommends keyword-research for gaps

keyword-research
   → finds high-opportunity keywords for your category
   → feeds into metadata-optimization

metadata-optimization
   → generates your title, subtitle, and keyword field
   → ready to ship

You start with an audit, follow the recommendations, and end with a fully optimized listing, all in one conversation with your AI assistant. No dashboards, no spreadsheets, no context switching.

Build, ship, and optimize your app in one workflow

The Expo development workflow is fast, automated, and increasingly AI-native. You can build a polished app, run tests, and ship to production without leaving your editor.

ASO Skills brings the same philosophy to your marketing workflow. You shouldn't have to context-switch to a separate dashboard, copy-paste keywords into a spreadsheet, or hire a consultant to understand why your app isn't ranking.

Ask your AI. Get a structured audit. Fix the highest-impact issues. Ship the update with Expo’s services.

The entire loop - build, ship, optimize, iterate - now lives in one environment. Expo already removed the friction from shipping. I hope these skills remove the friction from being found.

Here is the repo: github.com/Eronred/aso-skills