Starting from what you have
A spreadsheet, a document, a picture or a page of your own site — attached, read, and built from.
Almost nothing is built from nothing. There is a spreadsheet the business has been run out of for three years, a PDF of the form being replaced, a page on your own site that already says what you do.
Describing any of that in a sentence throws most of it away. So attach it instead. It is read before a line is written, and it is the single biggest difference to what comes back first time.
What you can attach#
| Spreadsheets | .xlsx, .ods, .csv. The most useful by a distance — see below |
| Documents | PDF, Word, Markdown, plain text |
| Pictures | A screenshot of what it should look like, a photo of the paper form |
| A website | A page of your own, read the way a person would read it |
Up to twelve things, 25MB each. Attach them on the last question when creating an application — Is there something to start from? — or drop them into the conversation afterwards.
Why a spreadsheet is the interesting one#
A spreadsheet is the most honest statement of how a business actually works, including the parts nobody thinks to mention. So it gets read properly:
- Every sheet, with the headings found wherever they are. A title row, a blank line and a logo above them is the normal case, and it is skipped.
- Every column, and what it holds — text, a number, a date, a yes or no — worked out from the values rather than the heading.
- Which columns look like identifiers, so the application knows what makes a record that record.
- A few real rows, so what the values actually look like is visible.
Then two things happen. The application is built around your structure — your tables, your fields, your names. And your actual records come across, so the first version opens with your own data in it rather than invented examples.
It will ask before it commits#
Where the structure is genuinely ambiguous — which sheets matter, what identifies a record, whether two sheets are related — you get a screen to confirm it, with its own answer already filled in. Correct anything wrong and press the button.
It should not ask about the parts that are obvious.
What it does not do#
It does not keep your spreadsheet in step. The records are copied once. After that the application is where they live, and the spreadsheet is a historical document. That is the point of having the application.
It does not read a file that needs signing in to. A page behind a login cannot be fetched — save it as a document and attach that.
Removing one#
Attached things are listed under the brief in the workbench. Removing one stops later builds seeing it; what was already built stays as it is.