How to build an app with AI
You want software that does something, not a page that describes it.
A working web app with its own pages, a database and sign-in, live on a URL you can send to someone. You describe it in a paragraph; the parts that normally take a weekend of setup — auth, a database, deployment — are done for you.
The prompt
Paste this as-is, then change the details to yours. It is written to produce something working rather than something pretty.
Build a web app for tracking client projects. I need sign-in, and each signed-in user should only see their own projects. A project has a name, a client, a status (not started / in progress / done), a due date and notes. Show projects as a list I can filter by status, plus a dashboard with counts per status and anything overdue highlighted. Let me add, edit and delete projects. Keep the design clean and plain — readable tables over decoration.
How to get it right
- 1
Describe the data before the design
Name the things your app stores and the fields each one has. That paragraph is what becomes your database. Asking for 'a nice project tracker' gets you a nice-looking page with nothing behind it.
- 2
Say who sees what
If more than one person signs in, say so explicitly — 'each user only sees their own' is a different app from 'everyone sees everything', and it is far cheaper to get right in the first prompt than to retrofit.
- 3
Put real data in immediately
Add three or four real records the moment it is live. Empty screens hide the mistakes: a list looks fine with no rows, and wrong until it has some.
- 4
Publish, then give it to one person
One real user finds more in ten minutes than another hour of tweaking. This is the step almost everyone skips.
What it will not do
- Measured on Kleap: of the sites whose owners set out to build an app with real functionality, 37% ended up with a database provisioned — and only a fraction ever got a row into it. The build is the easy half.
- Anything that needs a third-party account — payments, email sending, a calendar — still needs you to connect that account. The AI writes the integration; it cannot own the credentials.
344 of these are already live
Published sites, not mockups — open any of them.
See the examples →