Build an app with AI

Chickadee Bandit is built from small apps, and when none of them does what your household needs, an admin can describe the missing one and have the hub build it. The AI writes the app, checks it against the same rules every app follows, and installs it into your household. It can also change an app that is already installed. There is nothing to download and no code to read.

1. On the web, open Apps and choose Build your own app with AI. Only admins see it. In a shared space, only an admin of the household that sponsors the space can build, because the build is paid from that household's credits.
2. Under What should the app do?, describe it as you would to a person: who uses it, what they record, who should see what, and what it should show on the home screen. A sentence is too little; a paragraph is right.
3. Tap Build it. The page shows each step as the AI takes it, and how many credits the build has used so far.
4. When it finishes, tap Open. If the app asked to read household data that needs an admin's approval, the page shows Review and approveinstead, and the app runs once an admin approves it on the Apps page.

Stop ends a build. If the AI is in the middle of a step, the build stops after that step. A stopped build keeps whatever it had already installed.

The builder only builds or changes apps for your household. Ask it for anything else and it says so and does not start, at no cost. The AI can also decline a request it is not willing to build; try describing the app differently.

Each step the AI takes costs one AI credit. A new app is usually four to six steps, and a build stops after twelve. A build needs at least four credits to start, so a build that could not finish does not spend what you have for nothing; with four or five the page warns that a new app may stop before the end. A step that produced nothing is given back: a step the AI declined, a step where the model could not be reached, and the first step whose answer was cut off. A household runs one build at a time and can start twenty a day.

Credits come with every paid plan, from the day it starts, and top up every month until the pool reaches its cap. Unused credits carry over, up to that cap:

• Family: 20 to start, then 8 a month, holding up to 32.
• Group: 40 to start, then 20 a month, holding up to 80.
• Organization: 80 to start, then 50 a month, holding up to 200.

An admin can buy more on the billing page, 20 credits for $5 or 60 credits for $12. Purchased credits never expire, are spent after the plan's own, and a household can hold up to 200 of them. Credits are not available during the free trial, and a household whose plan has lapsed can still spend the credits it bought.

The same credits pay for higher-quality reading of forwarded email and scanned photos, one credit each, if an admin turns that on under Settings, Family Inbox; see Family Inbox. Turn it off there to keep every credit for building.

A build in a shared space is paid from the credits of the household that sponsors the space, and only that household's admins can start one; its billing page names the space beside each step. The new app counts toward the space's app limit, so a full space can have an app changed but not a new one added. Co-parenting spaces, and spaces that take apps from the catalog only, have no builder.

An app the AI wrote gets no special trust. It declares which household data it reads and writes, and the hub refuses anything it did not declare. Its own data lives in your household's database, in tables that belong to that app alone. Who can see which rows is enforced by the hub on every query, not by the app's own screens. If the app asks to read something an admin must approve, it waits for that approval before it runs.

That does not make a badly designed app a good one. Read what the app says it reads and who it says can see each thing, and check what a child's account sees before a child uses it.

What you type, and the household's list of installed apps, are sent to Anthropic, which runs the Claude models, to produce the app. The AI can read who is in the household: each member's name and role, whether they have their own sign-in, and the household's groups. It does not read the calendar, tasks, locations, messages or the data inside your apps; an app it builds reads those itself when it runs, and only what it declares. Your description is kept only while the build runs and for a day afterwards; the household's record of the build keeps its length, its outcome and the credits it used, never the text. Details in our Privacy Policy.

Someone who writes code can start from any of the open-source apps and install their own version from a URL on the Apps page, and an admin who already works with Claude or another assistant can connect it under Settings, AI Access and build in conversation. All three are in the guide on building a custom app for your household.