Cabina

A podcast app built with Flutter. Search podcasts, open a show to browse its episodes, and stream an episode. A personal Library lets you keep the shows you follow.

This is the starting point for the Labhouse Flutter technical test. Please read the test brief you were sent alongside this repository before you begin.

Requirements

• Flutter 3.41.x (Dart 3.11.x). The exact version is pinned in .fvmrc (3.41.9).
• An iOS Simulator / device or an Android emulator / device.

Flutter SDK via FVM (recommended)

The project pins its Flutter SDK with FVM so everyone builds against the same version. Install FVM and the pinned SDK once:

brew install fvm            # or: dart pub global activate fvm
fvm install                 # reads .fvmrc and installs Flutter 3.41.9

Then prefix Flutter/Dart commands with fvm (see below). For the IDE: VS Code picks up the SDK automatically via .vscode/settings.json; in Android Studio / IntelliJ set the Flutter SDK path to <project>/.fvm/flutter_sdk.

Prefer managing Flutter yourself? Any 3.41.x SDK works — just drop the fvm prefix from the commands below.

Running

fvm flutter pub get
fvm dart run build_runner build --delete-conflicting-outputs   # generates *.g.dart
fvm flutter run

The app targets iOS and Android. No API keys or accounts are required to run the core app.

Tech overview

• State: flutter_bloc (BLoC + Cubit), manual DI via RepositoryProvider / BlocProvider.
• Navigation: go_router.
• Data:
  • Discover / Search → iTunes Search API (no key).
  • Show detail → the podcast's RSS feed (parsed with package:xml).
  • Audio → streamed with just_audio.
  • Local persistence → shared_preferences / hive.
• Models: json_serializable + equatable + copyWith (run build_runner after changing an annotated model).
• Theming: a ThemeExtension (AppTheme) — read colors via context.appTheme.

Project layout

lib/
  app/            App widget + dependency injection
  common/         Theme, errors, networking, shared widgets, extensions
  discover/       Discover grid + favourites
  search/         Podcast search
  show_detail/    Podcast detail + RSS feed parsing + episodes
  player/         Audio player (just_audio)
  library/        The user's followed podcasts
  router/         go_router configuration
  home/           Bottom-nav shell

Tests

flutter test

A few example tests live under test/ — use them as a pattern for any you add.

Configuration — AI Companion

The AI Episode Companion (added as part of the test) needs an LLM provider key. Do not commit it. Define it as a documented constant the reviewer can fill in locally, e.g.:

// lib/common/env/env.dart
// TODO(reviewer): provide an OpenAI/Anthropic API key to run the AI feature.
const String kLlmApiKey = String.fromEnvironment('LLM_API_KEY');

and document here how to provide it (e.g. flutter run --dart-define=LLM_API_KEY=...).