How to Prompt and Iterate with Literally Anything, Our Text-to-Web-App Tool

When we built Literally Anything, we wanted anyone — with a development background or otherwise — to have the ability to build any app, website, or digital feature they wanted. In the first month since launch, users have made over 13,000 creations. With experimentation comes learnings, of course, and there are a few tips and tricks we’ve discovered that can help make these “LAPPS” even more functional and useful. 

As with ChatGPT, Bard, and any of the other AI tools on the market, prompt engineering is the key to success. When you’re creating something a bit more complex, you have to build upon your original prompt — it’s akin to an art form of sorts — but you still follow the golden rule: Use clear directions and language baked in specificity. When you have that down, you can use Literally Anything to build a fun, silly thing (like RIP Verified Twitter Prompt or the Cat Gif Generator) or a functional tool, such as the Tech Support Chatbot. 

On top of prompt engineering, our engineers have given Literally Anything users the ability to take commands (even those created by others) and alter them, making something entirely new. That means you can take that aforementioned chatbot, for example, and turn it into a chatbot with a more specific idea — but we’ll get into that below. To help make your Literally Anything creation dreams a reality, use the below examples to understand the basics of prompting and iterating, and then get to building your own LAPP. 

Example LAPP #1: RIP Verified Twitter Prompt

Prompt: “An app that generates a short and humorous obituary for a Twitter user's Verified Check Mark which disappeared on 4/20/2023, using ChatGPT. Input field for the username. Button that shares the obituary to Twitter. Make the design of the app look like Twitter. Show a loading indicator while the obituary is being generated.”

Why this works: The user gave Literally Anything exact instructions about design, which API to use, and what should be shown each step of the way.

Example LAPP #2: Animated Cat Gif Generator

Prompt: “Build a web page of animated cat gifs using Giphy.”

How to iterate: Type in this same prompt, but change "cat" to other types of gifs that you find amusing, such as animal gifs, memes, cartoon gifs, sports gifs, celebrity gifs, or even creative gifs (which use animation or other special effects to create something unique and interesting).

Example LAPP #3: Tech Support Chatbot

Prompt: “Build me a chatbot app that provides answers in a natural conversation for customer support.”

How to iterate: Type in this prompt, but replace “customer support” with your own topic that you’d like to create a chatbot around. For example, if you’re interested in creating an AI chatbot to ask questions about gardening tips, change the prompt to this: “Build me a chatbot app that provides answers in a natural conversation for gardening tips and support.”