Transcription
So, what if I told you that you could build an entire app idea, change your mind 50 times, discuss new features, and still have 100% of your base 44 credits still left? Now, that sounds impossible, right? Well, that's what I thought, too, until I discovered this base 44 feature hiding in plain sight. And once you know how to use it, you'll never waste credits ever again.
In this video, I'm going to walk you through the exact workflow that will save you hundreds of credits per project. I've built dozens of apps using this method. And the best part about all of this, it's it's not complicated. You just need to know which features to use and when to use them.
But before we dive in, we've created a free community where we share all our base 44 prompts, templates, and also the workflows. It's completely free to join and inside you'll find everything you need to master this platform. Now, let's show you how to actually use Base 44 the right way. So, it's time for us to get started.
Now, let's go over to B 44. I have a link down in the description below where you can get started with B 44. But before we talk about building it from scratch, let me show you the fastest way to save credits, the B 44 template gallery. Now, most people will open B 44 and they immediately start building from zero. And that is the mistake because B 44 has dozens of pre-built templates that you can actually customize. And using them costs you zero credits to start. And here's how all of it works.
Now, you are going to click on the template gallery and you'll see templates for productivity apps, social media apps, e-commerce stores, booking systems, fitness trackers. Basically, every app category you can think of, it's over here. Let's say I want to build a time management app. Now, instead of describing everything from scratch, I can just pick the task manager template, which already has user authentication, task creation, categories, due dates, and a dashboard. All the foundational stuff is already done. Now, I can customize it. And I'm only spending credits on the customizations, not on building the entire foundation. Find something close to what you want and then customize it.
Now, let me show you the feature that's going to change everything for you. And that's called plan mode. This is the thinking phase before you actually build anything. And here's the beautiful part about it. It doesn't use any credits, absolutely zero. And you can spend an hour in plan mode. You can iterate your idea 50 times. You can ask hundreds of questions. And your credit counter stays at 100%.
So now let's go through how it all works. So when you toggle on plan mode, this is where you describe your app idea in as much detail as possible. Now let me give you a real example. Okay, I'm building this time management app. In plan mode, I can say I want users to be able to create tasks. Okay, but I'm not sure if they should be able to create recurring tasks or just one-time tasks. And now the AI will discuss both options with me. It will explain the pros and the cons and it will help me to decide. And then I can just say, okay, let's do recurring tasks. But how would that work with the weekly stats view? And we can keep coming back and forth over here clarifying every single detail until I have a crystal clear vision of exactly what I'm building.
The key here is to spend 10 to 15 minutes in plan mode, really thinking through your app, thinking about exactly how you want to be. Ask about edge cases, ask about user flows, ask about technical limitations, and get everything clear in your mind before you hit that build button. Because the key here is once you are clear, you build it right the first time. And it saves you 50 plus credits in divisions. And trust me, this is the most underused feature in Base 44.
And here's why this matters for your starter plan. If you skip plan mode and you just start building, what what will happen is you'll burn through your credits, fixing the mistakes. But if you plan first, you can build three to five apps per month on the starter plan instead of just one. And that's the difference between feeling like base 44 is expensive versus feeling like it's the best investment you've ever made. Honestly, if you're watching this and you haven't signed up yet, the starter plan is all you need to get started. Literally, click the link down in the description below, grab the starter plan, and start building today.
Here's the thing that most people get wrong from the very beginning. They write terrible prompts and bad prompts, well, it just means wasted credits and frustrating rebuilds. Your prompt is literally 50% of your success. So, if you get this wrong, everything else falls apart. Let me show you the formula that works every single time. There are five key elements to a good prompt. The purpose, the features, the user flow, the design style, and your technical requirements.
Here's what a bad prompt looks like. Okay. build me a productivity app and that's it. And then you will get an app that's missing half the features that you actually wanted. Now, here's what a good prompt looks like. And you can just copy mine from the free school community. Link is in the description below. And now, can you see the difference? One prompt saves you 20 credits in the vision. The good prompt tells base 44 exactly what you want. And here's how it should look and how it should work.
And just put this into perspective. Other no code platforms charge you per app, per user or per feature. Base 44, one flat monthly fee, unlimited apps, unlimited users.
Now, here's the second credit saving hack and that is reference URLs. The problem with AI is that it doesn't know what what vibe you are going for. You might say modern design and the AI thinks one thing, but you are picturing something completely different. And that's where reference URLs come in. And here's what to do. You are going to find an app or website that has the design style or the functionality that you like. Maybe you love the way Notion's interface feels. Maybe you like how Duolingo structures their lessons. Or maybe there's a specific app that has the exact color scheme that you want. And what you're going to do is you're going to copy that URL and then you're going to paste it into base 44 when you are describing your app.
Okay. So now let me show you how this works with our time management app. I could say I want the design to feel like to-d doist. Clean, minimal with a focus on the task list and then just paste in the to-doist URL. Now B4 analyzes that site and understands exactly what aesthetic I'm going for. It sees the layout, the color choices, the typography, the spaces, and builds my app to match that vibe. This is huge when it comes to saving credits because it eliminates the back and forth of no, make it more minimal or no, follow the colors or no, the colors are too bright or the layout feels cluttered. You get it right the first time because the AI already knows what you want.
And here's a quick bonus tip. You can provide two or three reference URLs for different aspects of your app. One for design inspiration, one for functionality flow, and one for specific features. The AI will combine all of those references into something unique for you.
And here's what that actually means. People are selling custom apps built on base 44 for around $2,000 to maybe even $5,000 each. If you make just one app per month and you sell it to a local business, you've already made back your investment 100 times over. Now, that's the real opportunity with this.
Okay, now let's talk about another amazing base 44 feature and that is discuss mode. This is another feature that most people sleep on and it only costs 0.3 credits per conversation. And discuss mode is exactly what it sounds like, a conversation mode where you can talk to the AI about your app without actually changing any code. Nothing breaks, nothing gets rebuilt. You are just having a discussion. And this is perfect for when you're not sure about something or you want to explore different options before committing to any change.
Here's when you use discuss mode. Okay, let's say I'm looking at my time management app and I'm thinking, hm, should I add a Pomodo time feature? Well, then instead of just prompting the AI to add it and spending so many credits to rebuild the entire app, I could simply just switch to discuss mode and I can ask, "How would a Pomodo timer work with the existing task system? Would it integrate with the time blocks? What would the user interface look like?" Stuff like that. The AI will walk me through all of that without touching my code.
Or maybe I'm troubleshooting something specific. Maybe I need an answer to that. I notice the weekly stats aren't calculating correctly. Instead of rebuilding it and wasting credits, I can go to discuss mode and I could say the weekly stats seem a bit off. What data is being used to calculate them? Is there a logic error? And then what's going to happen? The AI will explain what's happening in the real time. And then I can decide if I need to make a change or if it's actually working as it's intended.
Here's the math that makes this so powerful. Five discussions equals 1.5 credits which five rebuilds equals to about 50 plus credits. Use discussion mode to plan your changes, understand your options and troubleshoot issues. Then when you are absolutely sure about what you want, execute it once and that's the pro way to go about this.
Now here's a feature that most people don't utilize to save their credits and that is visual edit mode. This is where you can make changes to your app visually without writing any prompts. Now, let me show you how this works. I'm going to go over here and I'm going to click into the visual edit mode. Now, I can click on any element in the app and I can edit directly. I don't like the layout on this page. So, I'm going to select it and I'm going to enter a prompt to alter just a little bit. And there we go. Done. There we have it. I'm even going to click on the color picker and I'm also going to explore a couple of variations of color that's available so that I can see which one I like best cuz this right now it's I'm not I'm not totally sold on this. So yeah, I like this one. I think I'll settle for this medium blue tone. It feels a bit calmer and also a lot more professional. And the best part about this is that all of these changes are saved automatically. You're not breaking anything. You're not touching the code, which is super important. You are just designing visually while base 44 updates everything in the background. And I mean this is perfect for those final touches when you want pixel perfect cont without writing another prompt. You get the speed of AI building with the precision of manual design. And here's the kicker. Each visual edit costs zero credits if you're not using the prompting feature. Compared to writing a prompt and rebuilding, which costs a 5 to 10 credits every time, you are saving a ton just by following this.
Okay, so now the app is built. Now it's time for us to put it to the test. So I'm going to be signing up as a brand new user. And immediately, from what I can see, the onboarding, well, it feels smooth. I land on the dashboard. Okay, now let's create a task called finish video script and with high priority and a due date of today. And what happens? It pops right into my list. And then I set it as a 2hour time block for focused work. And the app kicks off a clean timer. Nice. Just my task and the countdown. No clutter. No distractions whatsoever.
So now let's see what happens when I mark the task as complete. There we go. A satisfying stag animation plays and the progress bar updates instantly. One out of three of the tasks are done. Okay, let's check the weekly stats. It's tracking my completed tasks, the total focused hours, the productivity trend over the past 7 days, and everything is pulling through correctly and it's updating in real time. And that's amazing. It it just works.
And here's something that's really cool about this. If I click on the dashboard on the top left, I can view all of my backend stuff, which is the registered users, the task data, the domain integrations, and everything about the app. I can just I can check it over here. Base 44 handles the hosting automatically. So the moment you build it, it's sharable.
Now once your app looks and feels the way you want, getting it live only takes a single click. What you're going to do is you're going to hook up a custom domain and it's out there now. It's hosted, it's secured, and it's ready for actual users. And if you go to mobile, just choose the mobile app option, and B 44 generates your Apple Store and Play Store files. And then it guides you through every step of the submission process.
And here's the part that really matters. You own everything that you built. The code, the data, the design, it's all yours. You can export the whole thing to GitHub if you want, but most people won't need to because B 44 takes care of the hosting, the security, and also the maintenance. So, your app is out in the world. And now it's ready to grow.
This workflow alone can save you over 100 credits per project. But more than that, it means you can build more apps. You can experiment without hesitation and you can actually get good at base 44 without constantly worrying about your credit balance. So, if you've been on the fence about signing up for B 44 and if you've been hesitant, well, I'm telling you this right now. This is the tool that you need. With template gallery, with plan mode, visual edit mode, you'll build more apps than you ever thought was possible.
And if you want the complete base 44 workflow guide with all of my prompts, my templates, and also my step-by-step tutorials, our free school community has it all for you and a bunch of other things. The link is down in the description below. And if and if you're ready to start building, the link to sign up for base 44 is also in the description down below. Start with the starter plan. Follow this exact workflow and see how far it gets you.
Thank you so much for watching and making it all the way till the end. Give this video a like, subscribe to the channel, and I will catch you on the next one.