Roam
A rental app for people who know the feel they want better than the filters. Describe a stay in one sentence ("quiet pet friendly cabin with a hot tub under $300 a night") and get ranked stays back. Ask booking and policy questions about a stay and get the exact text from Roam's own policies. Book with Stripe, or become a host and list your own stay.
Built with Expo (React Native), Expo Router, NativeWind, Clerk, Sanity, Neon Postgres, Stripe, DeepSeek and PostHog.
Try it
Roam is a demo. Payments run in Stripe test mode, so no real money moves, and the stays and photos are samples.
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Landing page: roam.norbertoignaciojr.dev.
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Android: download the APK (about 46 MB, arm64) and install it, allowing installs from your browser or file manager. It talks to the hosted API.
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iOS: there is no iOS build to share yet (it needs an Apple Developer account). The screenshots below show the iOS app.
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Sign in with the demo account, or create your own with an email:
The demo account is shared, so saved stays and bookings made on it are visible to the next person.
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Pay with the Stripe test card 4242 4242 4242 4242, any future expiry, any CVC.
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Search and policy questions call a paid model, so there is a daily cap. If it is used up, search falls back to a simpler reading and Ask says to try tomorrow.
Screenshots
More: add a stay, manage a stay, settings, personal info, onboarding, sign up, sign in.
Architecture
The app and its API routes are one Expo project. API routes (src/app/api/*+api.ts) run on EAS Hosting (Cloudflare Workers). Every route verifies the Clerk session and counts the call before doing any work.
flowchart LR
App["Roam app<br/>Expo + Expo Router"] -->|"session token"| API["API routes<br/>EAS Hosting"]
App -->|"public reads"| CDN["Sanity CDN<br/>stays, hosts, policies"]
App -->|"PaymentSheet"| Stripe
App -.->|"events, no text"| PostHog
API --> Clerk["Clerk<br/>auth, saved stays"]
API --> Neon[("Neon Postgres<br/>bookings, holds,<br/>rate limits, daily budget")]
API --> Context["Sanity Context<br/>GROQ search + policy KB"]
API --> Embed["Sanity Dataset Embeddings<br/>soft-intent ranking"]
API --> DeepSeek["DeepSeek<br/>labels the sentence,<br/>picks policy entries"]
API --> Stripe["Stripe<br/>PaymentIntents"]
Stripe -->|"webhook"| API
API -->|"host writes"| Sanity["Sanity API<br/>property, host, policy"]
Repository layout:
| Path | What it is |
|---|
src/app/ | Screens (Expo Router) and API routes |
src/components/ | Shared design-system components, shown at /design-system |
src/lib/ | Hooks, search and booking logic, server helpers, database schema |
studio/ | Sanity Studio (the only content schema) and seed scripts |
landing/ | Astro marketing site, separate package.json |
drizzle/ | Postgres migrations |
prompts/ | Plan for each feature, as history |
AGENTS.md | Every decision that is still true |
Decisions
The full list is in AGENTS.md. The ones that shape the app:
- Code finds the options, the model only labels them. Prices, guest counts, places and dates are parsed in code. DeepSeek says whether a vibe or amenity is wanted or avoided and what a number means, and anything off the list falls back to a regex reading.
- Hard constraints are GROQ filters, soft intent is embeddings. Price, guests, type, amenities, pets and place filter. "Quiet" and "cozy" only rank, using text on the property itself. The query is built from allowlisted literals, so guest text never enters it.
- No model writes shown text. Policy answers are Roam's own entries, word for word, with their source. The model only picks which entries, and if none fit the app says so and points to support.
- Clerk owns auth and private data. Saved stays live in Clerk metadata, not in the public Sanity dataset.
- The server prices every booking. The app never sends an amount. A booking exists only after Stripe confirms payment, and database constraints make double-booking impossible.
- Hosts own their stays. Ownership is an HMAC of the Clerk user ID, never the raw ID, because the dataset is public. Generated stay copy is checked for invented facts before it is written.
- Spend is capped twice. Per-user and per-address rate limits, plus a global daily budget for paid calls, both counted in Neon.
- One tool per job. Sanity for content, Clerk for auth, Neon for bookings, Stripe for payments. Moving a job to another tool is a deliberate change.
Run it yourself
You need your own Clerk, Sanity, Neon, Stripe (test mode) and DeepSeek accounts. Copy the variable names from .env.example into .env (never commit it).
npm install
npx drizzle-kit migrate # create the database tables
npx expo start # press i for the iOS simulator
npx expo lint
npx tsc --noEmit
Native modules (Stripe, SVG) need a development build rather than Expo Go for custom builds: npx expo run:ios.
Content and seed data:
cd studio
npx sanity schema deploy && npx sanity deploy
npx sanity exec scripts/seed.ts --with-user-token
Landing page:
cd landing && npm install && npm run dev
Android APK for testers (EAS):
npx eas-cli@latest build --platform android --profile production-apk
Notes
- Stripe is test mode only. The server refuses a live key unless
BOOKINGS_LIVE=1.
- Clerk runs on a development instance, which is why the demo account uses a
+clerk_test email with a fixed code.
- Stay photos are Unsplash placeholders and the stays are seeded samples.
