Quickstart

From signup to a deployed app in five minutes. The fastest path to a working vly project.

This is the five-minute path. By the end you’ll have a real, deployed app live at a public URL. Pick something modest for your first prompt — a task list, a link saver, a feedback form — and lean on the prompt examples below.

You’ll need. A vly.ai account (free tier works), a modern browser, and roughly five focused minutes. No CLI, no git, nothing to install.

1. Sign in to vly.ai

   Open vly.ai/app and sign in. New accounts start on the Free plan with credits to build your first few apps.

   Sign in with Google or GitHub if you’d like vly to commit changes to a repo on your behalf later. You can always link or unlink an account from Workspace settings.

2. Click New project and write a prompt

   The prompt is the entire spec. Be specific about what the app does, who uses it, and what data it stores. Don’t worry about styling or implementation details — vly handles those.

   Try one of these:

   Task tracker

   A real-time task tracker for small teams. Each user has a list of tasks
   with title, due date, and priority (low, medium, high). Tasks can be
   assigned to other team members. When a task is assigned, the assignee
   gets an in-app notification. Built-in auth so each user only sees their
   own and their team's tasks.
   

   Link saver

   A bookmark manager. I paste a URL, it fetches the page title and a
   favicon and saves it. Each bookmark has tags. I can search bookmarks
   by title or tag. Show recently added at the top.
   

   Feedback form

   A public-facing feedback form. Visitors submit a comment and an
   optional email. Admins (logged-in users) see all submissions in a
   sortable table, can mark each as 'reviewed' or 'archived', and reply
   by email through Resend.
   

   Stuck on what to ask for? See the prompt library for 30+ examples organized by app type, or read Prompting fundamentals before you write your first one.

3. Pick an agent (or stick with the default)

   Below the prompt box, choose which AI coding agent runs your build:

   • Claude Code (default) — strong reasoning over many files. Best general-purpose pick.
   • OpenAI Codex — fastest on small, surgical edits.
   • Gemini CLI — best for multi-file design work.

   For a first project, leave it on Claude Code. You can switch agents at any point during iteration. Read Choosing an agent for the full breakdown.

4. Watch vly plan, then build

   After you submit, vly enters Plan mode by default and shows you the schema, pages, and components it intends to create — before writing any code.

   Read the plan. If anything’s wrong, edit it directly or reply with a refinement (“also store a ‘description’ field on each task”). When the plan looks right, click Approve and build.

   The chosen agent then writes the code. You’ll see files appear live in the editor on the right. A typical first build takes 30 seconds to two minutes.

   When you see “Build complete” and a preview URL, your app is running.

5. Open the preview and try it

   Click the preview URL (or open it in a new tab). You should see your app, fully usable, with auth, the database, and the UI all wired up.

   Open the preview in a second browser window or incognito tab and create another account. Watch the data sync between the two windows in real time — that’s Convex doing its thing.

6. Iterate by chatting

   Want to add a feature, fix something, change the design? Just ask. Examples:

   Add a feature

   Add a settings page where users can change their display name
   and upload an avatar.
   

   Each prompt produces a new revision in version history — you can roll back at any time.

7. Deploy to a custom domain (optional)

   Your app is already on a public *.vly.app URL. To use your own domain:

   1. In your project, go to Settings → Domains.
   2. Enter your domain (e.g., app.example.com).
   3. Add the two DNS records vly shows you at your DNS provider.
   4. Wait ~5 minutes for SSL to provision.

   See Custom domains for the full walkthrough including apex domains, redirects, and DNSSEC.

You did it

You shipped a deployed full-stack app in under ten minutes. Real database, real auth, real custom domain. That’s the workflow.

What to read next

Build your first real app

A longer, end-to-end walkthrough of a complete project — from prompt to launch.

Master prompting

The single skill that makes everything faster. The five-layer method takes 20 minutes to learn.

How vly works

The four-step loop, the agent system, the data flow. The mental model to make sense of everything else.

Got stuck? See Troubleshooting common errors, check the FAQ, or reach out via support.