Ask for the tool you’re missing
Priya Until Monday 10:00 SwapEvery team has one: the spreadsheet everyone edits and nobody trusts. The on-call rota in a pinned message. The trial list somebody keeps in their notes app. Too small to build, too annoying to keep doing by hand, and it has been like that for a year.
Describe it in a sentence and WeMachines builds it, hosts it, and gives it a place in your workspace. Then you change it by asking again.
What an app actually is
A real tool: its own page in the workspace, its own database when it needs one, and a build the team opens like anything else. Not a document, not a chart in a doc - if what you want is something to read, ask the AI for a page instead and it will write one in seconds.
Two properties shape everything you would ask for. An app reads the workspace - tasks, docs, members, chat, the connected repo - and cannot write back to it. And an app has no clock. So “post the standup to #general every morning” is not an app; it is an app that holds the standup and a routine that reads it and posts. Once you see that split, the asks get much better.
Write the ask like a request, not a spec
One line, starting with what it is for. “Build an on-call rota with a swap button and who is on this week at the top.” “Build a trial watch that lists workspaces whose trial ends this week.” “Build a retro board for Friday.” How to build an app has six worked examples with the exact sentence for each, and pasting one of those is a perfectly good way to start.
Then iterate in the same thread: “make the caves bigger”, “group by team instead”, “this column should be the one we sort on”. The thread is the app’s history and it belongs to the whole team - every ask anyone made, who made it, what it cost, and what came back.
Watching a turn go
While it builds, it says what it is doing in plain English - thinking it through, installing what it needs, making changes - and posts screenshots along the way, so you can see the change rather than take its word for it. It never shows commands or file paths, and a tool call that failed on the way to a working answer is not reported as an error.
Nadia 2m agoAnyone can press Stop. Stop really stops: the half-made changes are thrown away, the app goes back to the version it was on, and it asks what to do instead. A turn that goes quiet for ten minutes, or runs for forty-five, is stopped the same way and says so.
If an app ever looks stuck, or says an agent is already working with nothing visible happening: press Stop. It clears a lock nothing is holding, and then you can send again.
Keeping one healthy over months
The thread is context, and a long one costs money on every turn. “Clear history” at the top wipes it for everyone and starts the AI with a fresh memory - it still knows the app’s files, just not the conversation. The app, its versions and the hosted build are untouched. Do it whenever a thread has become mostly archaeology.
An app’s code lives in WeMachines rather than in your GitHub repo, so there is no branch and no review step: every turn saves a version, and you can go back to one. That is the right trade for a rota and the wrong one for your product - which is what coding agents on your repo are for.
Two honest caveats
Apps are in early access. They are live and usable on every plan, and they are also the newest part of WeMachines and the part that changes fastest. We would rather say that than let you find out.
Building costs credits. A build turn is one of the two heaviest things a workspace does, and an admin can cap or switch that off entirely - see Spend credits well. How many apps a workspace can keep depends on the plan; the 14-day trial is on Start-up, which carries twenty, plenty to find out whether your team will actually use the thing.
Start with the annoying one
Not the ambitious one. The rota, the checklist, the tracker somebody maintains by hand on Fridays. It takes a few minutes, the team can see it that afternoon, and you will know from how often they open it whether the next ask is worth making.