Blueprints that carry an app

A blueprint can ship the finished web app your agent built, with your settings lifted out, so the next person installs the real thing. How it is checked, and how to look inside first.

If your blueprint builds a web app, it can ship the finished app rather than a description of one. Ask your agent to make the blueprint carry the app it built, and it takes the app on your agent's computer, lifts out everything that is specific to your own setup (the market it watches, the list it starts from, the schedule it runs on) into one settings file, and stores the rest as it is.

What changes for the next person

What changes for the next person is the whole point. Installing that blueprint writes the working app straight onto their agent's computer and applies their answers as its settings, instead of their agent building it again from a description. It takes seconds rather than the best part of an hour, and two people who install it get the same app rather than two interpretations of one.

Before you ask for it

Two things are worth knowing before you ask for it:

• The app is checked before it is stored, and the check can refuse. Anything that should not travel to somebody else's copy stops it: a password or API key written into the code, an address that only works on your machine, a colleague's name or email. Your agent is told the exact file and line, fixes it, and tries again. This is the common reason it takes an extra step.
• It has not been installed anywhere yet. Storing the app is not the same as proving it works for someone else, and your agent should say so rather than promise more. The first real install is still the first real install.

If the original deliberately left something for each person to fill in, that travels too: the install tells the new agent which file and exactly what it has to do, rather than leaving it to guess.

Installing one that carries its app

Installing a blueprint that carries its app starts the app first and lets the rest of its files finish arriving in the background, so the page is up sooner. Your answers from the install questions are applied as the app's settings before it starts. If a schedule you gave is not a real schedule, the install stops and says what to change, rather than setting up an app that never runs.

Checking it before it goes out

Before anyone installs it, you can ask your agent to look inside the exact copy that will ship: list its files, read any one of them, or search all of them for words that must not leave your workspace, such as customer, product or company names. The automatic check stops passwords, keys, member names and addresses from travelling; it does not know your customers' names, so tell your agent which words to look for. Anything it finds is fixed in the working copy on your agent's computer and captured again, which gives the blueprint a new app to carry. A blueprint stays private until a person approves publishing it, so there is time to look.