Hey everyone, I’m excited to share something I’ve been working on that I think a lot of you are going to find useful.
I built a free Chrome extension called App-Bridge that connects your AppSheet editor directly to Appster Chat (my AppSheet-focused AI assistant). Instead of describing your app from memory every time you need help - copying column names, trying to remember how your references connect, explaining your automation setup - App-Bridge captures your full app configuration with one click and makes it available to the AI instantly.
Once connected, Appster can look up your actual column names, inspect formulas and validation rules, trace references across tables, browse your views and actions, inspect automations end-to-end, and even read whatever you have open in the formula editor in real time.
The extension itself is completely free. It also works standalone with your own API key (OpenAI, Claude, or Gemini) if you just want to chat with your schema directly.
The LLM Help tab is a basic chat bot
It has access to your app’s schema and tools to allow it to interrogate the setup (to find columns, formulas, references, etc.)
This can take awhile sometimes to figure things out, calling tool after tool after tool for what seems like an endless loop… but it hasalwaysfigured out what I was asking. (Sometimes just taking like 3 minutes to get there. lol)
Because of the number of tool calls, it’s best to use a small-cheap model (likeClaude Haiku, which I’ve been using and it’s completely surprised me) - otherwise costs can start to pile up as it keeps digging.
It’s good enough to find something if you don’t feel like digging for it
For the full experience with AppSheet-specific expertise, curated resources, and the advanced schema toolkit, that’s through Appster Chat.
Other Features
Extract the schema of your app (easily send it to another Ai chat services)
Save schema snapshots (helpful for comparing over time)
Setup takes under a minute: install from the Chrome Web Store, open your app in the editor, open the bridge, and start chatting.
I want to say I am constantly inspired by the collaborative spirit within this wonderful community. I want to extend a sincere thank you and a huge congratulations to our active contributors.
Your willingness to share knowledge and solve complex challenges empowers us all.
I often used the Information feature of AppSheet to look through my apps, but this App-Bridge tool seems much more user-friendly. Awesome work! Thank you.
I have only tried the “extract” feature, which extracts the structure and downloads all the formats: Full Schema (JSON), LLM Optimized (JSON), and Documentation (Markdown). But I spent most of my time reading the Markdown file instead, just because Markdown is easier and more user-friendly for me, as a Citizen Developer. In my opinion, I suggest you focus more on Markdown, since it’s a gift for me, personally, to read, and also for AI to interpret.
What I love:
The UI of the App-Bridge is easy to understand and easy to follow.
Just open an AppSheet app editor, hit the Extract button, and the entire structure is captured. So easy!
All components are included in the export with their corresponding size: App Configuration, Tables & Columns, Slices, Views, Actions, Format Rules, and Automations.
Even all the Security Filter rules are included as well under each table.
The format in Markdown is quite easy to read and understand.
Maybe a little guide and some tips on how to read the Markdown file can be a good idea, since we are mostly Citizen Developers.
Here is my feedback (mainly focusing on the Markdown file, since I personally read the downloaded result with my citizen developer hat on):
Tables & Columns:
All names and types are listed, indicating which column is the KEY, if it’s a virtual or physical column, if it’s required, and what formula is applied.
Missing Initial Value, and maybe all the other attributes like Show_If, Valid_If would be beneficial.
Missing ‘Are Updates Allowed’ status.
Regarding the security filter part: The biggest issue for new AppSheet owners is making Security Filters that conflict with the Quick Sync feature. So a way to collate Security Filters and their rules could save so much time and effort.
I got a strange value ‘✓’ in tables. But I guess it’s related to a YES/NO value.
The quotes surrounding the formula can be removed. If its intent is to color format in the Markdown file, then formulas with multiple line breaks will cause issues regarding the color format. Besides, please keep the full formula instead of trimming it to just a few initial words (Well, this is only based on me, a human (I believe I’m still such ), reading the file, so later on I can Ctrl + F and search for occurrences of all the columns I want).
Slices:
Just slice name, slice formula, and Update modes are enough in most cases.
I have seen sometimes that people don’t know why their view does not include certain actions, just because they are using a view based on a slice with a specific setup for this field.
A tip for users regarding a view based on a slice can be valuable:
Creating a detail view based on a slice can create hidden form views and detail views correspondingly.
Views:
View name, view type, and position already bring enough info.
A tip for users to follow a rule of naming views could be a good idea, since your code is scanning all the text and trying to group them together, especially regarding DASHBOARD View. On the other hand, knowing which table or slice it is based on would be nice too. I believe also that it gives you another way to group the views as well.
Actions:
Info on action name, action type, and condition for execution.
Regarding the action type: you are using your own definition like NAVIGATE_APP, SET_COLUMN_VALUE, REF_ACTION, COMPOSITE… But I could not understand what the meaning was at first glance, so I had to go back to the editor to check the exact meaning. So I suggest simply copying and pasting the action type directly from the editor, since we are all used to those definitions.
Another little suggestion, and this is only for my case. I don’t know if others have the same principle: There are 3 categories of user-created actions on each table: User-interacting actions, actions used by another action (non-user-interacting), and actions used in BOT automation. And I always hide the actions in the latter two categories. So knowing the position of each action would be beneficial as well.
Format rule:
This is really nice-to-have. What I’m personally most interested in is what color has been used in each rule in each table, so I can reuse some colors if possible.
Automation - quite a big task:
To be honest, if I were you, implementation on this part would give me a lot of headaches, since there are a lot of options for making a bot. So it’s already impressive that you have done something in this area.
I think I would mostly be interested in knowing all the actions that are being used across all processes, so that I can measure the impact of modifying a ‘Hide’ action.
That’s what I have for now. Once again, Thank you very much for making such an awesome tool to help us, citizen developers. Please keep it up!
Install: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/elebopfnehnapjklmaoinnejnkeoeepb
More info: https://www.multitechvisions.com/app-bridge
All names and types are listed, indicating which column is the KEY, if it’s a virtual or physical column, if it’s required, and what formula is applied.
Missing Initial Value, and maybe all the other attributes like Show_If, Valid_If would be beneficial.
I got a strange value ‘✓’ in tables. But I guess it’s related to a YES/NO value.
), reading the file, so later on I can Ctrl + F and search for occurrences of all the columns I want).