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Getting Started

This guide gets you from zero to building your first data app in a few minutes. You’ll do everything in your browser — no installs, no terminal, no setup script.

Before You Start

Section titled “Before You Start”

You need:

  • A Wallabi account with access to your organization. If you don’t have one, ask your team admin to invite you.
  • Access to an app host — the project that contains your data apps, like your team’s workspace. If you don’t see one in the Wallabi app, reach out to your Wallabi contact.

That’s it. Everything else is provisioned for you.

Start an Edit Session

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An Edit Session is a ready-to-use development environment running in your browser. When you start one, Wallabi spins up a fresh VM with your app host already cloned, dependencies installed, and Claude Code signed in and waiting.

  1. Sign in to the Wallabi app and open your app host.
  2. Find the Edit Sessions section and click New Session.
  3. Wait for the session to provision. This takes a minute or two while Wallabi sets up your VM, clones the repo, installs dependencies, and starts your dev server.
  4. When it’s ready, the session opens in a new browser tab with VS Code, a terminal running your dev server, and a second terminal where Claude Code is already signed in.

What’s Pre-Provisioned

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When your session is ready, the following are already set up for you:

  • Your app host repository, cloned and ready
  • All dependencies installed and the dev server running
  • An API token, scoped to your user and injected automatically
  • Claude Code, installed and signed in to your account
  • The data-apps-builder plugin, so slash commands like /begin, /ship, and /create-app work out of the box

You don’t need to run pnpm install, generate a token, or install Claude Code yourself — it’s all done.

Build Your First App

Section titled “Build Your First App”

With your session open, find the terminal running Claude Code and start a session:

/begin Build a dashboard showing monthly trends for our most important metric

Claude Code will ask clarifying questions, explore your data, and build a draft. As changes land, the dev server reloads automatically — open your app from the Wallabi app to watch it update.

Iterate by asking for changes:

  • “Add a date range filter”
  • “Break this down by region”
  • “Add a summary table below the chart”

When it looks right: /ship.

For more example prompts, see Sample Data and Prompts.

Resuming and Ending Sessions

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Your Edit Session stays available in the Wallabi app under Edit Sessions on your app host. You can close the browser tab and resume later — your work in progress is preserved.

What’s Next

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