Deep link
A URL that opens one specific screen inside an installed app instead of dumping the user on the home screen or a web page.
See it
What it is
A deep link is a URL that resolves to a screen inside an installed app rather than to the app's home screen or your website. myapp://product/42 and https://shop.com/product/42 can both be deep links; what makes them deep is that your router parses the path and params and pushes the right screen with the right state.
You need them the moment anything outside the app points inward: push notifications, marketing emails, QR codes, share sheets, password reset flows, ads. The work is mostly boring routing plumbing: register a URL pattern per screen, and make sure a cold start (app not running) rebuilds a sensible back stack so tapping back does not dump the user into a dead end.
The classic trap is confusing the two flavors. A custom scheme like myapp:// is trivial to set up but does nothing if the app is not installed (iOS silently fails, Android may show a browser error), and any other app can claim the same scheme. https deep links backed by domain verification (Universal Links, Android App Links) fix both problems, so treat custom schemes as a fallback and internal-testing tool, not the main road.
Ask AI for it
Add deep linking to this React Native app. Register a linking config mapping URL paths to screens: /product/:id, /orders/:id, and /settings. Support both the https domain and the custom scheme as sources. On a cold start, parse the initial URL and build a back stack (Home -> List -> Detail) so the back gesture behaves; on a warm start, handle the incoming URL event and push. Validate and coerce params, and route unknown or malformed paths to Home rather than crashing.