So I've been trying to build an app using tools like Emergent and Base44, and while they're honestly pretty impressive, I kept running into a few things that made the whole experience frustrating. A few things that really started bothering me: No visibility into credits burn. Sometimes you make what feels like a tiny change, and suddenly a big chunk of your credits is gone. This was my no 1 frustration with these apps. Getting a good-looking UI is kinda difficult. The first version usually looks like every other AI-generated dashboard and is mostly good for prototyping. I didn't have a lot of control in my design without burning a lot of credits. Free credits run out before you can properly test anything. The initial credits did not let me build what I wanted to try these platforms out. After a while, there's a paywall for literally everything. Experimenting can break things that were already working. You ask the AI to change one thing, and sometimes it messes up something completely unrelated. Having a reliable way to go back to an earlier version would make a huge difference. It's hard to visualise the app before actually building it. You explain what you want, get a textual plan back, and basically have to trust that the AI understood your vision. You only find out what it actually looks like after spending credits. I don't have much control on the app design. After running into these issues repeatedly, I eventually decided to try building my own AI app builder, primarily as a side-project but it has been pretty useful to me, so I wanted some early feedback. I've been working on something called zocri.com (there’s literally no meaning to this :D), with the idea of making the process a little less frustrating. Some of the things I'm trying to get right: Showing estimated credit usage before running a prompt. In my usage, it’s always under +-20%. “Design First, Build Later” philosophy - You can choose themes, colour palettes, and edit you app design without burning credits, and once you’re satisfied, turn it into an app. Letting you experiment with themes, colours and layouts before generating the actual app. Making visual design changes without consuming AI credits - For example, you get to choose among skeuomorphism, brutalism, minimalism, etc. I feel this is a real gap in the current AI builder tools. Having version history so you can roll back changes when things go wrong. So if you don’t like the recent changes, you can always go back. Giving people enough free credits to actually experiment and evaluate the platform and create some value. It also supports integrations like authentication, payments, e-commerce, analytics, AI integrations and multi-user dashboards. Ofc, this is an ever growing list but the current integrations should be enough to get you going. I'm not posting this to claim I've solved everything. It's still a work in progress, and I'm sure there are plenty of things that need improvement. I'd genuinely like to hear from people who regularly use tools like Lovable, Bolt, Base44 or Emergent. You should be able to build a basic app with the free credits, but please DM me if you run out of credits, I’ll help you out. You can try it here: zocri.com   submitted by   /u/TrickyEntrance1328 [link]   [comments]