One paste into an AI agent puts a finished Elements app on your machine, ready to click through and change. We use Glowhollow (opens in a new tab), a community chat app with channels, reactions, photos, and who is online and typing, all live.
1. Get an AI agent
Use the one you already have. If you need one:
- Claude (opens in a new tab), with Claude Code
- Codex (opens in a new tab)
- Cursor (opens in a new tab)
In a desktop app, open the Code tab, not the general chat. The agent needs to run commands on your machine.
2. Paste this prompt
Install elements: curl -fsSL 'https://install.elements.dev?os=darwin' | sh && export PATH=~/elements/bin:$PATH Create an Elements app from the elementscode/demo-glowhollow scaffold: cd ~/elements/projects elements create myapp -scaffold=elementscode/demo-glowhollow cd myapp Start the app.
It installs Elements, creates the app from the demo and starts it. The
installer needs no admin privileges. It writes to ~/elements, adds a line to
your shell profile, and installs the extension for each editor it finds.
Or use the terminal
Install Elements:
curl -fsSL 'https://install.elements.dev?os=darwin' | sh && export PATH=~/elements/bin:$PATH
Create the app from the demo:
cd ~/elements/projects elements create myapp -scaffold=elementscode/demo-glowhollow
Start your app:
cd myapp elements start
elements start makes sure the project server is running, then starts your
app. The project server runs in the background while you work and holds your
project's build in memory. Each time you save a file, it brings the build up to
date in milliseconds: it compiles your code, applies migrations to the database and
runs the tests your change touched. Your terminal, your editor and your agent all
connect to the same server. All three see the same errors, and the server
runs their commands one after another, so a build, an install and a test run
never step on each other. Your app runs as its own program, and each save reloads it in place, without a restart.
3. Open the app
The app runs at http://localhost:4000. Where it opens depends on how you
started it. Claude's desktop app and the agent editors, such as Cursor, may
show it in a browser pane inside the app, and elements start in a terminal
opens your default browser. You can always open Chrome, or whichever browser
you use, and go to localhost:4000 (opens in a new tab) yourself.
An AI agent built Glowhollow in 22 minutes, with 24 tests passing. It is yours
now: the code is in ~/elements/projects/myapp, and it runs against a
real Postgres database that Elements installed and started for you.
4. Watch the app update live
Sign in as maya@glowhollow.test with the password glowhollow123. Then open
a private window, go to localhost:4000 again and sign in as
priya@glowhollow.test with the same password.
Put the two windows side by side. Type in one and the other shows that you are typing. Send a message, add a reaction, post in another channel, and watch the other window keep up: the message, the reaction and the unread badge arrive on their own.
5. Ask for a change
Tell your agent what you want, in plain words:
Agent ChatAdd threaded replies to messages, with a reply count under each message that has a thread.
Keep both windows open while it works. Every file the agent saves shows up on the page, and the agent hears about any error the moment it saves, so it fixes its own mistakes before it says it is done.
Try another demo
Pick any app from the demos (opens in a new tab): live chess, a podcast host, a coffee store, a paid newsletter. Each demo page has its own prompt under "Run it yourself." Paste it the same way.
The manual: start (opens in a new tab), cli (opens in a new tab), build (opens in a new tab), editors (opens in a new tab), database (opens in a new tab), livetable (opens in a new tab).