Creating a project from a prompt

Every project starts with a sentence. This page is what happens after you press Enter.

Writing the prompt

The composer sits at the top of the dashboard:

Ask Bookbag to create an app…

Enter sends. Shift+Enter adds a line. The box grows as you type, up to a point, then scrolls. The circular arrow button does the same as Enter; its tooltip reads Build it.

What to put in it

Describe the app the way you would explain it to a person who is going to build it:

• What it is. "A booking page for a barber shop."
• What screens it has. "A service list, a calendar of slots, a confirmation screen."
• Anything specific that matters. "Prices in pounds." "The confirmation shows the barber's name."
• A word about the feel, if you care. "Warm, not corporate."

Two or three sentences is the sweet spot. A single word gives the builder nothing to work from; a page of specification tends to get partly implemented, because one run has a step limit.

You do not need to mention the framework, the styling or the file layout. Those are fixed, and the builder already knows them.

What to leave out

Do not ask for a database, a login system with real accounts, payments that actually take money, or anything that needs a server of its own. The builder can create convincing versions of all of these, working from data held in the browser — which is genuinely useful for showing an idea. But the published output is a static site, so the pretend version is what stays pretend. Download the source and add a real back end yourself if you need one.

Choosing a design

Under the composer: 🎨 Look: and a row of pills. Surprise me is selected by default, meaning no design is chosen and the builder uses its own taste.

Each other pill is a design — a named look with a colour swatch. Hovering one shows its description. Clicking selects it; clicking the selected one deselects it.

At most six designs are shown here. See Designs for the full list and what each one instructs the builder to do.

What happens when you press Enter

In order:

1. Your organization is resolved. If you have none, Bookbag creates a personal workspace for you at your Bookbag account first.
2. A project row is created in that organization, with your prompt saved as its initial_prompt, the design you chose, and a status of active.
3. It is named. First, provisionally, from the first six words of your prompt — cut to 60 characters with an ellipsis if that is still too long. An empty prompt becomes Untitled app.
4. Your prompt is recorded as the first message in the project's chat.
5. A build run is created and started. You do not press anything else.
6. You are taken to the project page, already attached to the live run.
7. In the background, the AI renames the project to something short and readable — two to four words, title case. This usually lands within a few seconds and you will see the name change. If the rename produces something more than six words, or nothing at all, the truncated-prompt name stays.

Two refusals

No organization.

You need an organization to build in — Bookbag SSO could not be reached.

Bookbag could not reach the account service to find or create your workspace. Try again in a moment.

You are a viewer.

You can only view <organization> — ask an admin there for member access.

Viewers can read every project in an organization but create none. The composer does not disable itself for viewers, so this message is how you find out. Ask an owner or admin of that organization to change your role at your Bookbag account.

What the builder starts from

Every project begins as a copy of the same starter app: Next.js 14 with the App Router, React 18, Tailwind CSS 3.4, JavaScript, eight files. Its home page is a placeholder reading "Your app is being built", which is what you see in the preview for a few seconds before the builder replaces it.

There is exactly one template. The "Templates" tab on the dashboard is a different thing — those are starter prompts, not starter apps, and all of them build from the same base.

Creating a project without a prompt

If you somehow arrive with an empty prompt, a project is created with the name Untitled app, no chat message and no build run. Its preview reads "The preview appears here once the first build runs." Send a message and it comes to life.

How long the first build takes

Longer than every one after it, because the sandbox has to be built first: the template copied in, dependencies installed, a development server started and waited for. A minute or two locally; a few minutes on a cloud sandbox.

After that a small change takes twenty or thirty seconds.

Next

• The chat.
• What a build run is.