How we use Flutter for Tribe Social
Learn how our team migrated
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From FlutterFlow to Clean Architecture: How We’re Evolving Tribe Social’s Codebase
As Tribe Social has grown, so has the complexity of the app — especially now that we support multiple white-label platforms from a single codebase. In the early days we built in FlutterFlow because it allowed us to move quickly and validate what we were building. But like most tools designed for speed, it eventually ran into limits once we needed control, performance, and maintainability.
In this week’s training, we continued walking through what our migration looks like in practice — not just at a technical level, but in how we think about structure and why the change matters.
Why We’re Migrating
FlutterFlow helped us prototype fast, but as soon as the app matured, two things became clear:
- The code was extremely hard to reason about.
- The more we scaled, the slower development became.
So instead of “rewriting everything at once,” we’re migrating screen-by-screen and feature-by-feature into a cleaner architecture.
What Clean Architecture Gives Us
We’re moving toward a structure where each part of the app has one clear responsibility:
- Presentation layer — how things look and behave in the UI
- Domain layer — the business logic and rules
- Data layer — Firebase or API calls
When each layer has a single job, the code becomes smaller, easier to read, easier to test, and easier for AI to assist with. It also means we’re not tied to Firebase forever. Once things are separated, switching to our own backend is straightforward instead of painful.
A Real Example: The Community Feed
The best example of why this approach matters is the Groups Community Feed, which is the most active screen in the entire app — the one where posts, livestreams, and community interaction live.
Before refactor:
- 1,000+ lines of code inside a single widget
- Firestore queries mixed directly into UI
- FlutterFlow’s global state scattered everywhere
- Hard to modify, slow to load, and brittle
- ~420 lines total (less than half)
- UI broken into small focused widgets
- Local, more predictable state
- Logic separated from presentation
- Feed loads faster and feels more responsive
How the Refactor Happened (In Plain Language)
The approach we used was simple:
- First we mapped the screen
- Then we sliced it into components
- We isolated state
- We pulled logic out of the UI
- We kept the old code until parity was confirmed
Why This Matters Long-Term
This migration unlocks three major advantages:
✅ Better developer velocity
We can now add new features without fighting the architecture.
✅ Better performance for users
Screens load faster and interactions feel more instant.
✅ Easier future migrations
Because logic and UI are separated, we can replace Firebase with our own API later — without rewriting everything again.
The Bigger Picture
FlutterFlow was the right choice to start.
Clean Architecture is the right choice to grow.
This is the transition every maturing product eventually has to make — from “it works” to “it works well and scales.”
We’ll continue sharing these migrations as we go — not just the end result, but the thinking and craftsmanship behind it. Next up in this series: how we’re beginning to phase Firebase out on the backend and move toward our own API layer.
Practical Resources