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Quick Tips & Best Practices

A practical guide to building apps on Woz for everyone. This guide is designed for anyone getting started with Woz, no technical background required. It covers the core features you need to know, best practices for building effectively, and practical tips to help you get from idea to working app with confidence.

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Key features you need to know

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Plan Mode

Plan Mode is like having a smart co-pilot review your idea before any building happens. Instead of jumping straight into code, Woz first reads through your entire project, figures out what needs to change, and creates a clear step-by-step plan for you to review.

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How to use it

  1. Type what you want to build or change in the prompt bar.
  2. Make sure Plan Mode is selected.
  3. Hit send and Woz will analyze your project and show you a plan.
  4. Review the plan and make any edits before it starts building.
  5. Approve it and Woz automatically switches to Build Mode to execute.
Best practice: Always use Plan Mode for big changes. It saves you from having to undo mistakes later.

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Build Mode

Build Mode is for when you know exactly what you want and just need Woz to do it quickly. It skips the planning step and goes straight to making the change.

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How to use it

  1. Switch to Build Mode using the toggle in the prompt bar.
  2. Type your specific request. The more specific, the better.
  3. Hit send and Woz will make the change immediately.
  4. Check the preview to confirm it looks right.
Best practice: If your change touches more than one part of the app, go with Plan Mode. For quick single fixes, Build Mode is faster.

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Select Elements

Select Elements is one of the most powerful features in Woz and one of the easiest to use. Instead of trying to describe where something is in your app, you just click on it. Woz attaches that exact element to your chat so you can tell it what to change.

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How to use it

  1. Toggle on Select Elements at the bottom of the prompt bar.
  2. Click any element in your app preview that you want to change.
  3. It will automatically attach to your chat.
  4. Type your change, for example: “Make this icon bigger” or “Change this to blue.”
  5. Hit send and Woz will update only that element.
Best practice: You can select an entire frame or section too. This is great for changing background colors, layouts, or styles across a whole screen at once.

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Bug Fix

Bugs happen to everyone, even experienced developers. Woz makes fixing them easy. When something goes wrong in your app, a bug icon appears automatically. You do not need to understand the error and you do not need to Google it. Woz handles it for you.

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How to use it

  1. Look for the bug icon when Woz detects issues.
  2. Click it to open the error panel.
  3. You will see a list of all errors.
  4. Select all the bugs you want fixed.
  5. Click Ask Woz to Chat for fixing so everything attaches to the chat.
  6. Describe exactly what caused the bug before asking Woz to fix it.
  7. Hit send and Woz will analyze and fix the errors automatically.
Best practice: Before wrapping up your project, always do a final bug check.

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Screenshot to Chat

If you want to make changes to a specific screen in your app preview, you can take a screenshot of it and attach it directly to your Woz chat. No need to describe what you are looking at. The screenshot gives Woz the full visual context it needs to make the right change.

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How to use it

  1. Look for the camera icon on the left side of the app preview panel.
  2. Click it and Woz captures a screenshot of the current screen.
  3. The screenshot attaches automatically to your chat.
  4. Type what you want to change.
  5. Hit send and Woz uses the screenshot as visual context to make the change.
Best practice: Use Screenshot to Chat when Select Elements feels too precise. If you want to describe a layout change across a whole screen, a screenshot gives Woz the full picture at once.

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Best practices for building on Woz

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1. Start with what your app should do, not what it should look like

Describe the problem you are solving and who it is for. Example: “I want to build a tracker for small business owners to log daily sales.” Woz will figure out the layout.

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2. Use Plan Mode for anything complex, Build Mode for quick fixes

A good rule of thumb: if your change touches more than one screen or feature, use Plan Mode. For simple tweaks like colors, text, or button sizes, Build Mode is faster.

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3. Review the plan before approving it

Plan Mode shows you exactly what Woz intends to do before it does it. Take 30 seconds to read through it. If something looks off, edit the plan or ask Woz to adjust it.

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4. Use Select Elements or Screenshot to Chat instead of describing where things are

Instead of typing “find the blue button on the home screen near the top,” just click it with Select Elements or take a screenshot and describe the change. Both remove the guesswork and make your prompts faster and more accurate.

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5. Be specific in your prompts

Vague prompts get vague results. Instead of “make it look better,” try “increase the font size of the card title and add more spacing between cards.”

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6. Make one change at a time

Resist the urge to send a list of 10 changes at once. Make one change, check it in the preview, then move to the next. It is faster to catch small issues this way.

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7. Do not skip the bug check

Every time you make a significant change, glance at the bug icon. Catching errors early is much easier than debugging a finished app right before you are ready to share it.

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8. Start a new chat session for each task

Use the + button at the top of the chat panel to create a new session whenever you move on to a different task. Woz will still have full context of everything you built in previous sessions, so nothing gets lost. Keeping sessions separate makes it easier to track what changed and avoid conflicting instructions.

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9. Test your app as a real user would

After building, click through your app as if you are a first-time user. Sign up, fill in forms, and tap buttons. You will catch things that are hard to spot from the builder view.

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Ready to build?

Visit withwoz.com to get started, or reach out to the support team with any questions.