2. Ask for your app

Describe it the way you’d tell a friend: what it’s for, what you’ll put in, what it should add up or show you, and how it should look. There are examples to try on the Try asking card.

Your assistant writes the app, CloudCrane checks it and publishes it at its own address, and your assistant gives you the link to install it. Every app you make is also listed in Apps, with its link.

Keep personal details out of what you ask for: anyone with an app’s link can read its code. Enter names, numbers and the like in the app itself, where they’re kept on your phone.

What your assistant can do

• See your apps, with their install links.
• Read an app’s code, to change it.
• Read an app’s blueprint and tests, before changing it.
• See every version of an app, what changed in each, and which one is current.
• Publish a new app.
• Change an app, by publishing a new version of it.
• Go back to an earlier version.
• Delete an app, with every version of it.

With read only access it can do the first four. The rest need read and build.

What a blueprint is

Every app is published with a blueprint: a short, plain description of what it is for, what it keeps, what a person does in it, step by step (its journeys), what must always hold (its promises) and which websites it talks to, each with why. In Apps, tap the blueprint icon on an app to read its blueprint: each step and promise shows whether a test proved it.

Testing is a workspace setting, off by default so publishing is quick, that each app can change: a version is kept without tests, and its steps show “Not tested”. An owner can turn on Test apps before publishing in Settings, under General. Then every app comes with tests: short scripted steps, such as tap Add, type water, see water on the list, each saying which steps and promises it proves. A step or promise nothing proves is refused, and a version is kept only if its tests pass in a browser. A server with no test runner set up keeps a version with the note “Tests weren’t run: no test runner is set up on this server”, and its steps show “Not tested”.

Each app can also have its own setting: open its blueprint in Apps and turn Test before publishing on or off. It applies from the app’s next update, and Use the workspace setting puts it back. A new app follows the workspace setting.

The checks

Every version is checked before it’s published. These stop it being published, and your assistant is told which one failed:

• It’s bigger than 1 MB, or isn’t an HTML page.
• It has a password field. Apps here never ask for passwords.
• It has a card number field. Apps here never take payments.
• It has a form that sends what you type to another website.
• It names a website its blueprint doesn’t list.
• Its blueprint is missing or breaks a limit (at most 30 tests, 40 steps in a test, 5 websites). With testing on, its tests are missing or leave a step or promise unproven.

These are only warnings. The app is published, the warning is kept with that version (you’ll see it under Versions in Apps), and your assistant is asked to fix it:

• It loads scripts, stylesheets or fonts from other websites, which won’t load.
• It embeds frames from other sites, which won’t load.
• It sends requests to other websites, which are blocked.
• Its code seems to hold personal details: an email address, a phone number, or what looks like an Aadhaar number or a PAN.
• It’s missing the setting that sizes it for a phone, so it would look zoomed out.