Skip to content
ALIGNDocumentation

What is the App Builder

The App Builder is ALIGN’s web GIS IDE. It is where you assemble a complete GIS web application, not just a single map: templates, configurable widgets, real code, a live preview, and a database if you need one. You build it by hand, with an agentic AI, or both. Everything the AI does, you can also do yourself.

Where the Map Builder produces a web map, the App Builder produces a full application: a map plus the panels, widgets, pages and logic around it, running as a real web app you own.

Three ways to start

Section titled “Three ways to start”

You open the App Builder from the Dashboard. There are three ways to begin a project.

  • From a template. Pick a production-ready template from the gallery and give your project a name. The template comes fully wired, with a map, widgets and controls already in place, so you have a working app from the first second. See Templates.
  • From a web map. Turn a web map you saved in the Map Builder into an application. ALIGN provisions a new project around it, so your layers, styles and view carry straight over into a real app you can extend.
  • By duplicating an existing project. Copy one of your own projects to branch off it. You keep the original untouched and start the new one from an exact copy, which is the fastest way to reuse an app you already like.

Whichever door you take, you land in the same editor, ready to work.

The first open takes a moment

Section titled “The first open takes a moment”

The App Builder runs your app in a real development server, inside your browser. The first time you open a project, ALIGN mounts the files, installs the dependencies and starts that server. This takes a little time, and the live preview shows each step while it prepares.

After that first build, the environment is cached. Reopening the project, and every change you make afterwards, is fast: the preview updates live as you or the AI edit the app.

Your app stays yours

Section titled “Your app stays yours”

An App Builder project is a real codebase in open formats, with no lock-in. You can read every file, edit it, and take it with you. The AI accelerates the work and never locks you out of it, and ALIGN never leaves platform-only code inside your app.

Ready to look around? Start with the Interface overview.