Workflows automate the work. Mini apps give that work a face. Describe the little tool you want — "an app to log my daily food and chart it" — and Catalyst builds the workflows behind it, writes the app, and opens it live in your chat. It's a real, working tool you can use on the spot. No canvas, no front-end, no setup.
A mini app is a small, single-purpose page built on top of your workflows and your data. You don't drag boxes around to make one — you ask the assistant for it, and it writes the whole thing. The Food Tracker below — photo button, today's totals, a chart it drew itself, an editable list of meals — was made by asking for one.
Tell the assistant what you want. It builds any workflows the app needs, writes the page, and hands you a working app — without you ever leaving the chat.
The preview is the real app, running against your real data — not a picture of one. Use it on the spot. Don't like something? Say "make the tiles bigger, add a protein chart" and it changes.
An app sits on top of things you already have. It can run your workflows and read and write your data collections — that's how a button turns a photo into a logged, charted meal.
Every app runs in a locked-down sandbox with no way out to the open internet. It reaches Catalyst through one narrow, built-in bridge — and only the exact collections and workflows you let it use.
Say what you want in chat — "a little app to log my food and show me a weekly chart." No template to pick, no blank canvas. The assistant takes it from there.
you "build me a food tracker" Catalyst wires up the workflows the app needs — a photo-to-calories workflow, a place to store each meal — then writes the app itself as a single, self-contained page.
The app opens as a live preview next to the chat — already running. Snap a photo, see today's total update, scroll the week. It's not a link you have to go click.
"Add a protein chart." "Make it blue." The assistant edits the app and the preview updates. Every save is kept, so you can roll back to any earlier version.
What comes back isn't a wall of text — it's a working page. Buttons that run your workflows, tiles that read your data, a chart the app draws itself. Built for the one thing you asked for, and nothing else.
A mini app is code an AI wrote — and one day, code someone else shared. So Catalyst treats every app as untrusted from the start. It runs walled off, with one tiny door, and that door only opens onto what you allowed.
The app runs in a sealed-off frame with no network access of its own. It can't phone home, leak your data, or pull in anything from the outside.
Your sign-in stays with Catalyst, outside the app. The app can't read your session, your cookies, or anything else on the page around it.
Each app spells out exactly which data collections and which workflows it's allowed to touch. Ask for anything outside that list and the request is refused.
The app talks to Catalyst through a single built-in bridge — run a workflow, read or write a collection. Every call is checked against its grants before anything happens.
Calls through the bridge are capped, so a buggy loop in a generated app can't run up a bill or pound the backend.
The workflows it ran and the collections it read are shared things you built — they stay put, and anything else using them keeps working.
Most of the time, chat is enough. But every app also opens in a full editor — code on one side, the live app on the other, settings to the right — with an AI assistant built right in. Talk to it or type the code yourself; either way the preview keeps up.
An app is a single, compact component — small on purpose. Edit it directly, or let the assistant rewrite it for you.
The running app sits next to the code, against your real data, and refreshes as you edit — so there's no guessing what a change will do.
The same assistant lives in the editor. "Add a monthly view." "Show macros too." It edits the app, and the preview updates.
A settings panel holds the app's name, emoji, and exactly which collections and workflows it's allowed to reach.
Catalyst keeps a timeline of every save. Restore an earlier version and it lands as a new one — nothing is ever lost.
Apps read and write the same named collections your workflows fill and your chats query — one place for your data, usable everywhere.
The shortest path from "I wish I had a little app for this" to actually using one is the one where you just ask — and Catalyst builds the workflows, the data, and the app for you.