Sort It!: A Swipe-Based Photo Organizer

Sort It! is a mobile app prototype that tackles the chaos of your photo gallery. It aims to provide a simple, intuitive interface like Tinder to make organizing your memories fast and enjoyable.

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Inspiration

Most of our photo gallery, is a cluttered mess of thousands of screenshots, duplicates, and random pictures. The task of cleaning it is so overwhelming that I always put it off. I was inspired to build an app that would transform this chore into a fast, simple, and almost game-like experience. The "Code with Kiro Hackathon" was the perfect opportunity to bring this idea to life.

What it does

"Sort It!" currently functions as a solid proof-of-concept. The app successfully:

  1. Requests and receives permission to access the user's media library.
  2. Fetches all photos from the device's gallery.
  3. Displays these photos one-by-one in a clean, interactive card stack.

The core user interface and the photo-fetching mechanism are fully implemented, providing a tangible feel for the final app's user experience. The file operations (actually moving or deleting the photos after a swipe) are the next logical step in development.

How we built it

This project was built from the ground up using the Kiro AI IDE, which was instrumental in both planning and execution. I started with a high-level idea, and Kiro's spec and vibe modes helped me break it down into a structured plan with detailed user stories and a technical roadmap.

The AI-powered coding features were a massive help in generating the boilerplate for my React Native components, especially the custom hook (useMedia.ts) needed to interact with the expo-media-library API. The development loop was incredibly smooth; Kiro's integrated terminal handled all the Expo Go commands flawlessly, allowing me to get a live development version running on my phone just by scanning a QR code.

The tech stack is: • React Native with Expo • TypeScript for type safety • Zustand for lightweight state management

Challenges we ran into

The primary challenge was correctly implementing the logic to interface with the native device media library (expo-media-library). Ensuring the permissions were handled correctly and that photos were fetched efficiently was a significant learning curve. While the front-end swiping mechanic is complete, the next major challenge is to build the backend logic to handle the actual file system operations (moving and deleting files) in a safe and reliable way.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I am incredibly proud of building a functional front-end prototype from scratch during this hackathon. Creating a smooth, performant, and interactive swiping interface that successfully loads a user's entire photo library was a major accomplishment. More importantly, this project marks my first real deep-dive into using an AI IDE like Kiro for a complete development workflow, from idea to prototype.

What we learned

I learned a great deal about mobile development with React Native and Expo, specifically the complexities of interacting with native device APIs like the Media Library. Most significantly, I learned how a spec-driven, AI-powered IDE like Kiro can dramatically accelerate the process from idea to a working prototype.

What's next for Sort It!: A Swipe-Based Photo Organizer

The immediate next step is to implement the core file operations for moving and deleting photos based on the user's swipes. After that, I plan to build out the "Smart Album Management" feature, allowing users to create and select custom albums before they begin sorting.

Blog on: https://dev.to/babu_mohit_7/from-cluttered-to-organized-sort-it-m0j https://dev.to/babu_mohit_7/a-super-friendly-gallery-my-kiro-hackathon-project-sort-it-1ogk

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