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How AppHandle works
Task-focused guides for building, publishing, and running your apps. Work through them in order, or jump to whatever you need.
Getting started
6Create your first app and learn how the desk is organised.
What AppHandle is
Describe the app you need in plain language, and AppHandle builds it. Here is what that means in practice.
Create your first app
Describe what you need in plain language and watch AppHandle build it. No code required.
Describe what you want
How to write a description that produces the app you have in mind.
Finding your way around the desk
A tour of the desk: where your apps live, how to search, and where your credits and account settings are.
Start from a template
Begin a new app from a working one instead of a blank description.
Organise apps into workspaces
Group your apps into workspaces to keep the desk tidy, and move apps between them.
Building
10Change what you built, adjust the design, fix problems, and go back in time.
Ask for changes in the chat
How to describe what you want changed, read the agent's replies, and answer when it asks you a question.
Preview and publish
Check your app in Preview, then publish a finished version from the Publish panel.
Change your app
Add a field, rename something, remove a page, or change what a list shows — by describing the result you want.
Change how your app looks
Set the colours, corners, and font for the whole app, or restyle a single element on one screen.
Add pages and navigation
Give your app more than one screen, move between them, and choose which page opens first.
Use images and files
Bring a logo, photo, or document into your app, and control who can see it.
Go back to an earlier version
See the changes made to your app over time and return it to an earlier checkpoint.
Make and edit images
Create a picture from a description, change one you already have, and put it in your app.
Handle functions
The small pieces of work your app runs on AppHandle's servers, and who is allowed to call them.
Protect a form from bots
What the platform does by itself when a visitor who has not signed in sends a form, and what is still worth asking the builder for.
Data
5How your app stores information, and how to work with it.
How your app stores data
Every app comes with storage built in. Here is what your app keeps, and who can see it.
Add and edit entries
Ask for a form, choose the fields on each record, and edit or remove records later.
Search and filter
Add a search box, narrow a list by a field, sort it, and show a count or a total.
Import and export data
What you can bring into your app, and the ways to get its records back out.
Who can see your app's data
Public and private apps, what signing in changes, and why one app can never read another's records.
Accounts and access
6Give your app its own sign-in, and control who can do what.
Give your app its own sign-in
Let people sign in to your app with their AppHandle account, so the app knows who they are.
Choose who can open your app
Decide whether anyone with the address can open your app, or only people who sign in.
Invite people to work on your app
Give someone access to one app, and choose whether they can change it or only use it.
Manage the people who signed up
See who signed in to your app, what the app knows about them, and what you can do with that.
Who can do what
Two kinds of roles: who can work on an app, and what people can do inside the app you build.
Who can use a key you store
Once a key is stored in your app, this is who can actually use it, and who is never given the value.
Integrations
9Connect Google, Slack, payments, AI, and outside APIs.
Connect an integration
Connect the outside accounts your apps need — Google, Slack, Notion, and others — once, from your AppHandle account.
Use a connected service in your app
Ask the builder to read from or write to a service you connected, and understand how those calls are billed.
Google Workspace
Connect Google Sheets, Drive, Gmail, and Calendar with one approval, and put them to work in your app.
Send notifications to Slack
Connect Slack and post a message to a channel when something happens in your app.
Send email from your app
Send email from your app through AppHandle, what that means for replies, and when to use Gmail instead.
Add AI to your app
Give your app AI behaviour on the model you already set for it, and understand who can use it and what it costs.
Connect an outside API
Ask your app to call a service that has an API, and understand the network limits, metering, and how keys are stored.
Extra tools you can let the agent use
Optional outside tools the agent can use while building your app, and how to switch them on.
Teaching the agent new tricks
The skills your app already has, the ones you can install, and how to upload your own.
Publishing
8Take your app live and put it on an address you choose.
Publish your app
Take your app from preview to a live page people can visit on its own address.
Claim a short address
Replace your app's automatic address with a short, memorable name of your own.
Connect your own domain
Serve your app on a domain you already own, with one DNS record to confirm it is yours.
Share your app
Send your app's link, and understand what a visitor sees on a public or private app.
Take an app down or delete it
Stop other people opening an app, or remove it and its data for good.
Monitoring and analytics
What the Monitoring & Telemetry card shows about your app, and how to record the actions that matter.
Keep a copy of your app
Duplicate an app, download its project, or download the published site.
Publish your app as a template
Offer your finished app as a starting point other people can build from.
Money
2Charge inside your app and get paid.
Account and billing
5Credits, model keys, plans, invoices, and account settings.
Credits and top-ups
What credits pay for, how to add them, and where your balance is shown.
Build with your own model key
Connect a provider key, make it your default, and build without using credits.
Plans and limits
What is included every month, what credits pay for, and the real limits behind apps, storage, email, and metered use.
Invoices and receipts
Where to find a record of what you paid, and what AppHandle does not provide.
Your account settings
The six tabs in account settings, and where to change your profile.
AppHandlers
7What the work is, what you are paid, and what you need before you start.
Working as an AppHandler
What the work is, what you keep, what you pay for, and how the estimate, the clock and the bills work.
Hire an AppHandler
Find someone to work on your app by the hour, and see what hiring does before any money moves.
The estimate and the agreement
Write what the work is, agree the AppHandler's estimate, and know exactly when your money moves.
The work clock and your bills
How the clock counts time on a contract, and how you read and approve what it produces.
Stopping a contract
Cancel a contract before work starts, or stop one that is running, and know what happens to the money.
Disputes
How to ask AppHandle to check a bill or a whole contract, and what the decision can and cannot do.
Messages
Where conversations with the people working on your app live, and how to control the emails they send.
Troubleshooting
6What to do when something does not work.
When a build does not work
What to do when a build fails, or the app looks broken in the preview.
A published app will not open
The usual reasons a live app does not load, in the order worth checking.
A build is stuck or slow
What the waiting states mean, and how long a build can honestly take.
When you run out of credit
What stops when the month's included usage and your balance are both spent, what keeps working, and what happens after a top-up.
Get help and report a problem
How to reach a person when the guides and the desk have not solved it.
When the desk will not connect
What each desk connection message means, and what to do about it.