User Guide
Welcome to the Anybuild User Guide. This guide covers the Designer - the tool you use to define, build, and maintain applications on the Anybuild platform.
What’s in this guide
Section titled “What’s in this guide”Getting Started - Start here if you are new to Anybuild. This section explains what the platform is, how its pieces fit together, and walks through creating your first application from scratch - including what gets generated automatically and how to navigate the Designer from day one.
Applications - Every project in Anybuild lives inside an Application, and every Application is divided into Modules for organisation. This section covers creating and managing both, including application-level settings that affect how the whole project behaves.
Data Model - The data model is the foundation of everything else. Here you define Entities (the tables that hold your data), their Fields and Components, Enums for fixed value sets, Structures for typed shapes used across workflows and functions, and Auto-Numbers for automatically generated identifiers.
Data Explorer - Views let you query and present data from the model without writing application code. Build them visually in Design mode, or describe what you need in plain language and let the AI write the SQL - and switch between the two at any time.
Automation - Automate business logic with Database Workflows (synchronous PLV8 functions, built visually or in code) and Server Functions (asynchronous Node.js modules for external integrations, AI, file handling, and anything that runs outside the database). Triggers connect them to events - manual actions on records, scheduled runs, or other system signals.
User Interface - Build what users actually see. Portals are standalone web applications, each with its own URL, branding, and Navigation menu. Pages and Components are the screens and reusable UI elements inside them, built with an AI designer that generates interface code from plain-language descriptions.
Security - Control access at every level. Roles define what a user can do in the platform (including whether they can design applications or manage accounts). Identities are the actual user and service accounts. Security Rules set read, write, and execution permissions across entity fields, functions, portals, and navigation items - with specificity-based priority so broad defaults can be overridden for specific users or roles.
Data Capture - A quick-access tool in the Designer for testing data entry against any entity in the application, using auto-generated list and detail views. Useful for verifying data model behaviour during development before a portal is ready.