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Build an App: The Lifecycle
Every Builder Central build follows the same general flow, whatever you're building. This flow describes the phases in a build from start to finish.
A hands-on Builder Central Trailhead module walks one build through these phases from start to finish.
These phases describe the lifecycle, not a rigid click-by-click sequence. The Build Agent works conversationally and in batches. It generates work all at once or asks questions in a different order. Use these phases as a map of what happens, not a fixed sequence. The process is also iterative. Even after you deploy an app, you can keep refining it as your needs change.
Phase 1: Describe What You Want
Open Builder Central and start in the full-screen chat. Type your goal in plain language. Describe what the app is for, who uses it, and what it does.
Start from one of the starter prompts under Try one of these, or describe your app from scratch. A starter prompt drops editable text into the chat, so you can adjust it to your goal before you send it and let the Build Agent get started.
Phase 2: Review the Project Details
Project details are an organized summary of requirements in the Explorer. They list the objects the Build Agent creates, what any agent does, and what your app includes. Depending on how you start, the Build Agent shares the project details up front or confirms them as it builds.
Review the details and ask for any changes in the chat. For example, enter "Also let guests see their past cases," and the Build Agent updates them. You can also select Edit at the top right to edit the project details inline in the Explorer, without opening a separate builder tool. When the details look right, tell the Build Agent to go ahead and start building. It checks in with you along the way, so you stay in control.
Phase 3: Build and Preview
When the project details look right, you tell the Build Agent to go ahead, right in the chat, and it starts building. It creates the data model, automation, and the interface for your app and, where relevant, adds an agent grounded in the information that you provided. You can follow along as it builds, with your chat on one side and a live, in-app preview on the other. This in-app preview is the Design view, which is separate from a preview org that you open later with Preview.
Phase 4: Review Your App
Builder Central gives you two kinds of checks, and they answer different questions. Use the metadata visualizations to confirm that the app is structured correctly, and see it running to confirm that it looks and behaves the way you want. You can see it running two ways: use Design for a quick, in-app look at the interface while you build, and use Preview to validate against real data in a preview org.
Check the structure with the metadata visualizations
The metadata visualizations render the metadata that the Build Agent generated as interactive, real-time diagrams so you can review and understand it quickly without reading raw metadata. Viewing metadata this way doesn't change it. Depending on what your app includes, you can review diagrams like these.
- Data model: an entity-relationship diagram of your objects, with standard and custom objects visually distinguished, and master-detail relationships (solid lines) shown separately from lookup relationships (dashed lines).
- Agents: a hierarchical diagram of your agent structure and request-routing paths, showing the main agent, its start agent, and any subagents.
- Flows: a flowchart of execution paths and decision logic, with standard sequences and fault paths shown as distinct line styles, and decision branches that you can expand or collapse.
- Flexipages: a diagram of each Lightning page's regions, the components within them, and their fields and properties.
- Permission sets: an easy-to-scan overview of the permissions that a permission set grants.
To review your app's metadata, select the item that you want to inspect in the Explorer panel, such as an entry under Agents or your data model. Then use the visualizations to zoom, pan, and select elements to see their details.
You can edit from the metadata visualizations two ways. Select an element in the visualization and describe the change, which gives the Build Agent the right context, or describe the change to the Build Agent in chat.
See it in action
Use both views as you work.
Design: a live, in-app preview. Design in the Explorer shows a live preview of your app's interface as the Build Agent builds, so you can check the layout and navigation without leaving Builder Central. Design is interface-only, so it doesn't read your org's data.
Preview: validate in a preview org. Selecting Preview deploys your metadata to a preview org, a temporary copy of your sandbox that reflects your data without affecting it, and opens it in a new browser tab, so you can validate your metadata in a real org that mimics your sandbox.
- The preview org is ephemeral and tied to your project, so you don't need to clean it up.
- When you preview again, only your new changes are applied, and they appear almost instantly.
- The preview org runs the app against real data from the sandbox. Agents aren't deployed to the preview org, so publish to your sandbox and test the agent there. Preview orgs don't include Data 360 data, so if your agent is grounded in Data 360, test it in your sandbox.
Phase 5: Refine Your App
You can refine the app in two ways. Neither one requires code.
- Ask the Build Agent. Describe the change in plain language to adjust the data model, restyle the UI, or change behavior. To restyle, describe the look you want. For example, enter "Use coral and teal for the headers and buttons." The Build Agent updates the design and refreshes the live preview in Design.
- Edit in Design. In the Design tab of the Explorer, select an element and adjust its style and appearance in the property panel. This is separate from Preview, which opens the preview org. When you apply your changes, the Build Agent updates the underlying code. Style changes that you make to a reusable element, a component used in more than one place, such as a tile or heading, apply to every instance of that element in the app.
Phase 6: Test and Deploy
Before you deploy, test the app in a preview org. Select Preview, open a page, and interact with the app. Because agents aren't deployed to the preview org, publish your app to the sandbox with Publish to Sandbox and test the agent there.
When the app is ready to deploy, publish it with Publish to Sandbox. Publishing is always something you start; Builder Central never publishes automatically. The Publish to Sandbox button doesn't appear in production orgs or Developer Edition orgs. In a production org, you can still ask the Build Agent to deploy your work. From a sandbox, use DX Inspector to deploy to production.
Governance with Lifecycle Center
Governance isn't a separate build phase. It's an org-level control that applies as your work moves toward production. With Lifecycle Center, you authenticate into your governance org so the change and release controls your organization has set apply to what you build in Builder Central.
If your org uses governance and governance setup isn't finished, Builder Central stops you before a new project is created. When you start a project, Builder Central checks whether your org's governance is connected. If it isn't, you're prompted to finish setting up governance, and Builder Central sends you back to Salesforce to complete it in DX Inspector. After governance setup is complete, return to Builder Central and start your project again. Orgs that don't use this kind of governance aren't affected.
