Two Ways to Build a Tool in Korfix — Manually and with AI
Say you need a personal expense tracker. Not a spreadsheet — an actual tool: wallets, expense categories, transactions, and a dashboard with a pie chart and a list of recent entries.
In Korfix there are two paths to that. They produce the same result. But they feel like two different decades.
What we're building
Let's agree on the scope so we can talk concretely:
- Wallets — cash, card, savings.
- Expense categories — food, transport, subscriptions, misc.
- Transactions — amount, wallet, category, date.
- Dashboard — pie chart of spending by category, plus a list of recent transactions.
Path one: manually, like any data platform
Sign up at vibe.korfix.info — email, confirmation, no credit card. Then you start building.
Create three catalogs. A catalog is a table with typed fields. The Transactions catalog will look like this:
| Field | Type |
|---|---|
amount | number |
wallet | relation → Wallets catalog |
category | relation → Expense Categories catalog |
date | date |
You need to think this through: what references what, which field is a number, which is a relation. That's schema design — done with a mouse instead of SQL, but still schema design.
Add your wallets and expense categories.
Open the dashboard. Add a widget: source — Transactions catalog, type — pie chart, group by — category, value — sum of the amount field. Add a second widget — list, latest Transactions.
Done. It works.
And here's the honest part: at this step Korfix looks like any other data platform. Catalogs instead of tables, a drag-and-drop dashboard — almost any BI tool or Airtable with add-ons can do the same. You designed the schema, assembled the dashboard by clicking, and you'll maintain it yourself.
That works. It's fine. And it's "how things used to be done".
If Korfix could only do this, there'd be nothing worth writing an article about.
Path two: you describe it — AI builds the app
Now the same thing, done differently.
Connect korfix-devkit. Two options. Quick — just tell Claude to read docs.korfix.info. Better — install the plugin:
/plugin marketplace add korfixdev/marketplace
/plugin install korfix-devkit@korfixdev
The plugin brings agents and skills. The main actors are two agents: korfix-analyst interviews you and designs the solution, korfix-miniapp-dev writes the app and deploys it.
Describe what you need — in one sentence:
I need an app in Korfix for expense tracking. I manage wallets and expense categories, log transactions. I need a dashboard widget — a pie chart of spending by category and a list of recent transactions.
AI doesn't jump into writing code. First korfix-analyst kicks in — asks questions, like an analyst clarifying a spec: do you need wallet-to-wallet transfers? show balance per wallet? what's the default period for the pie chart — current month? one currency or multiple? You answer in plain words.
Then korfix-miniapp-dev builds the whole app — not a table, a full application:
config.json— manifest: name, dashboard widget, access permissions.- Installer — at install time it creates the Wallets, Expense Categories, and Transactions catalogs with the right field types and relations. You don't design the schema — AI baked it into the installer. On the platform this is called self-provisioning: the app deploys its own database.
- Widget — HTML with the pie chart and the transaction list, styled to match the platform.
Before upload, the app goes through an independent check: a separate validator agent reviews it fresh against the release checklist. Then AI packages everything and uploads it to your marketplace — using your instance and token, no deploy without those. You get a ready app to install. Sometimes AI sends you a link to it right away.
Install: one click — everything is there
Open the marketplace, click Install. The installer runs itself: three catalogs appear with the right structure, the dashboard widget shows up with the chart and transaction list.
You created zero fields. You didn't pick a chart type. You didn't think about what references what. You open it and use it: add wallets, categories, start logging transactions, the dashboard comes to life.
Something not right? Just say so
This isn't "generated and forgotten". A week later you'll realize you need a month filter or another widget — wallet balances. You go back to the same AI:
Add a month selector to the widget and a second block — balance per wallet.
AI updates the app and redeploys. The installed version updates. You don't touch the schema or the code — you describe what you want, and that's it.
With path one, any change means you're back in the catalog editor and widget builder. With path two — one sentence.
In both cases, AI sees your data
Whichever path you take, the data lives in catalogs. And a catalog in Korfix is open to AI via MCP.
Grab your MCP token from settings, paste it into Claude Desktop — and "how much did I spend on food this month?" is now a question you ask Claude, who reads Transactions directly. The dashboard is for looking; MCP is for asking in plain language. This works on top of both paths.
Two worlds
- Path one. You're the platform operator. You design the schema, click through the builder, maintain it yourself. Korfix in the role of a BI or data platform.
- Path two. You're the client. AI is the contractor: interviews, designs, writes, deploys, updates. Korfix as the platform where AI assembles apps.
Korfix supports path one deliberately — so you can do things "the old way" if you want to touch everything yourself. But the platform was built for path two. When AI creates the installer, the schema, and the interface from a single sentence — and then updates everything from the next one — the question "why click manually?" answers itself.
You can do it the old way. But why would you.
Try path two on your own task. Registration at vibe.korfix.info is free and requires no credit card. Install korfix-devkit, describe the app you actually need — not expense tracking, yours — and see what AI builds. Then, if you want, build the same thing manually and decide which evening you prefer.
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