Build your first app

The vibe-coding flow — using CodeNow as a productivity multiplier on top of any existing stack. No agents involved on this page; just pure dev velocity with multi-model AI assist.

Quick start (the 5-minute version)

The Get Started guide covers the fast path. This page is the deeper dive.

The CodeNow workflow

CodeNow centers on multi-project tabs in one window — every project you work on is a tab at the top. Switch with Cmd+1 / Cmd+2 etc. Each project has its own:

File tree (sidebar)
Connections — Slack, GitHub, Jira, custom MCP scoped to this project only
Active model — pick Claude Code for one project, GPT for another, Gemini for a third
Terminal session — real shell, no sandbox, persistent across project switches
Knowledge bundle (CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md / GEMINI.md / .aider.conf.yml — generated from one source)

Build a real Express app — start to finish

Concrete walkthrough. Open CodeNow → + to add a new project (pick or create an empty folder, e.g. ~/code/hello-express) → click into the new tab.

1. Open the terminal

Press Ctrl+` (backtick). The bottom panel slides up with a real shell — full system access, no sandbox.

2. Start Claude Code (or any other model)

Click the Claude Code tab in the bottom panel. CodeNow runs claude in your project folder. Or click the model switcher at the top → switch to Codex / Gemini CLI / Aider if you prefer; same flow.

3. Ask for the app

Paste this prompt into Claude Code:

“Create an Express 4 app in server.js that serves a hello-world page on GET /, a GET /health endpoint that returns { ok: true, time: <iso> }, and a POST /echo that returns whatever JSON the client sent. Add package.json with start/dev scripts. Then npm install and run it.”

Claude writes server.js, package.json, runs npm install, then runs npm start. You see the server listening on http://localhost:3000 in the terminal.

4. Test it without leaving CodeNow

Open a second terminal tab (Cmd+T) and curl your endpoints:


curl localhost:3000
curl localhost:3000/health
curl -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"hi":"there"}' localhost:3000/echo

If any endpoint misbehaves, ask Claude to fix it in the first terminal — same context, same files.

Multi-model comparison — same prompt, three models

Open the Agents panel → Run sub-tab. This is the multi-model studio: paste a prompt, fan it out to multiple models in parallel, compare side-by-side.


System prompt   (optional)
User prompt     "Refactor server.js to use async/await for the POST /echo handler.
                 Keep the response shape identical."

Models — runs in parallel
[ ☑ Claude Opus ]  [ ☑ GPT-5 ]  [ ☑ Gemini 2.5 Pro ]   [+ Add model]

[Run all]

Hit Run all. Three cards appear, each with the model’s response, latency, token count, cost. Decide which output you like best, or take a feature from one and a paragraph from another. Snapshot the winner as an eval (one click, top-right of each card) so you have a regression test if the prompt drifts later.

This is what Cursor and VS Code don’t ship — the post-write loop, not just the write loop.

Real deploy — Vercel and Cloud Run

CodeNow doesn’t sandbox the terminal, so vercel, gh, gcloud, fly, railway all run from the bottom panel. No CodeNow-specific deploy step needed; you use the official CLI for whichever provider you ship to.

Vercel


# In CodeNow's terminal, in the project root
vercel              # first time: pick scope, project name, defaults
vercel --prod       # promote to production

CodeNow auto-imported your Vercel CLI auth on first launch (see Auto-import section below), so you’re already logged in.

Cloud Run


gcloud run deploy hello-express --source . --region us-central1

Same — gcloud auth comes from your existing gcloud auth login. CodeNow doesn’t reauth you; it uses your local credentials.

Other targets

Fly: fly launch && fly deploy
Railway: railway init && railway up
GitHub Pages / Releases: gh release create v0.1.0 ./dist/app.zip

The terminal is the same shell you’d have outside CodeNow. Pick any provider.

Auto-import on first launch

CodeNow scans for credentials and configs from other dev tools when you launch it the first time. You’ll see a list of detected sources with checkboxes:

Source	What gets imported
VS Code	Settings, keybindings, theme, installed extensions list
Cursor	Same as VS Code, plus active Cursor model preference
Claude Code	API key, last-used model, `CLAUDE.md` files in recent projects
`gh` CLI	Auth token, default org
`vercel` CLI	Team scope, default project linkage
`gcloud` CLI	Active config, project ID, account
`aider` config	`.aider.conf.yml`, model + commit format prefs
Anthropic Console	API key (if `ANTHROPIC_API_KEY` is in shell env or `~/.zshenv`)
OpenAI / Google AI Studio	Same — env-var sniff

Uncheck anything you don’t want. Click Import. Done — you have a working dev environment in 30 seconds, no manual setup.

The detection logic lives in src/migration.js in the IDE source if you want to inspect what’s actually read.

Note: CodeNow never uploads your credentials anywhere. Auto-import is a local file-to-file copy into ~/.codenow/. Your tokens stay on your machine.

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