How to Build a Working App in 10 Minutes Using Microsoft's AI App Builder

There's a version of this story you've heard before. Someone builds an app with AI in an afternoon, it looks brilliant in the demo, and then the questions start. Where does it live? Who's paying for the hosting? Where exactly is our data sitting now?

That's usually where the excitement quietly dies.

So the interesting thing about Microsoft's new AI app builder isn't that it builds an app from a prompt. It's where the app ends up.

It's called vibe.powerapps.com, it's in preview right now, and if you're on a Microsoft 365 Business subscription you already have it. Standard or premium licence, doesn't matter. No new line on the invoice.

What I built in ten minutes with one prompt

One prompt: a time-tracking app, roughly along the lines of Clockify. Ten minutes later I had a dashboard, timesheets, a client list, a projects screen, a reports function, manual entry, and a working start/stop timer — sitting on three tables it designed itself.

I didn't write a line of code. I didn't choose a host. I didn't set up a single security layer.

How the build process actually works

The flow is simple enough. You describe what you want, it writes you a plan, you read the plan and accept it, and it goes away and builds. There's a progress tracker so you can watch it work. Mine threw an error partway through and sorted itself out on a reload — it's preview software, that's the deal.

Two things are worth knowing before you try it, because both will confuse you otherwise.

The app runs on draft tables until you publish it. So you can click around and test the shape of the thing safely, but data won't stick and some buttons won't do anything. That's not a broken app, it's an unpublished one.

And it defaults to Dataverse for data. If you'd rather it ran against a SharePoint list, say so in your very first prompt and it will build against that instead. Much harder to change your mind later.

The code is read-only for now. When it needs hardening, you take it to VS Code — but you start here.

Why this matters for small businesses with odd little jobs

Most small businesses have two or three little jobs that don't justify buying software and don't fit in Planner. Tracking hours against a project. A simple approvals list. Some bespoke thing that only makes sense in your business.

Those jobs have always been too small to build for and too annoying to keep doing by hand. That gap is what just closed. Not because the AI got clever — because the thing it builds finally lands somewhere you already trust.

If you want to see the whole build from start to finish — including the bit where it broke — I've recorded a full walkthrough on YouTube. If you're curious about getting your team building and using tools like this inside your existing Microsoft 365 environment, that's exactly the kind of thing we work through together.