For most of history, "I have an app idea" meant "I need to find a developer." Not anymore. Bolt.new writes, runs, and previews complete web applications from a conversational prompt — and the free tier gives you enough daily tokens to build small, real tools without spending a rupee.
What Bolt.new actually does
You describe what you want in plain English. Bolt writes the code, installs everything it needs, and shows you a live, working preview. You then refine it by chatting — "make the button blue," "add a date field" — until it does what you want.
The free tier provides roughly 150,000 tokens a day, enough for a few small apps or steady iteration on one.
The golden rule: describe users, not features
Beginners list features ("a form, a table, a button"). That produces vague apps. Instead, describe what a user should be able to do:
A teacher should be able to mark attendance for a class and export it as a PDF report.
That single sentence tells Bolt the data, the actions, and the output.
A repeatable build process
1. Start with one user story
Build the core thing first. Don't ask for everything at once — that produces bloated, buggy code.
2. Be explicit about data
Tell it exactly what to store:
Store student name, roll number, class, and the date of each attendance mark.
3. Iterate one change at a time
When refining, protect what works:
Do not change anything except the export feature. Add a button that downloads the table as PDF.
4. Ask it to find its own gaps
Before you call it done:
List all missing error handling and edge cases for this app.
Things you could build this week
- A fee-collection tracker for a small school.
- An order-management tool for a tiffin or home-catering business.
- A personal expense tracker with charts.
- A simple landing page for a side business.
Know the limits
Bolt is brilliant for prototypes and personal tools. For anything handling payments or sensitive personal data, get a developer to review it before real users touch it — convenience shouldn't come at the cost of security.
The takeaway
Bolt.new collapses "I have an idea" into "I have a working prototype" — in an afternoon, for free. Describe users not features, build incrementally, and ask it to audit its own gaps. Ready to learn building and the rest of the AI toolkit properly? Start with CertifAI.
