Exploring Google's Free AI-Powered Coding Assistant in AI Studio

I like a lot of the Google AI and Gemini products, and they bring up something cool every time. There's Firebase Studio, which is technically their official vibe coding platform, or there's the Gemini canvas for people who use Gemini and want to build small artifacts. There's also Jewels and Stitch and whatnot. Basically, Google has a lot of stuff that overlaps the capabilities of each other, and most of them are pretty much free.

However, I saw one thing that isn't talked about at all by people, but using it is pretty awesome. This one is within the Google AI Studio. Yes, the same AI studio where you can use all of the Gemini models without any limits at all. There you also have vibe coding which actually existed for a while. However, it was very recently revamped and after using it, I think people should know about it for sure because it's not only free, but it's almost like an AI editor on the web.

Getting Started

To use it, you'd have to head on over to the "Build" section of AI Studio. This is where our AI coder is. It is basically an option given by them that allows you to build apps that utilize the Gemini API within them in order to build apps that work with Gemini. But that's not required because you can potentially build anything with it, even things that don't require AI in the app's functionality.

You do have some pretty good examples here that are created by the community and you can try them. You can also see the apps that you have created by heading on over to the "Your apps" section where you can see the apps that you have created as well as recent apps and the FAQ as well.

At the top, you have the prompt box. You can enter whatever it is that you want to make along with the option to attach any file like an image, PDF, and stuff. This allows you to either give it a project requirement or a mockup or a screenshot of the stuff that you wanted to make as well.

Building an App: An Example

Let me show you how you can use it as well. Let's ask it to make me an image cropper tool.

Now, it will open up this interface and as you can see, it will start to think and go over the steps to do here. The interface is pretty slick for sure. Here you can see the stuff being done. While you can also see that it writes all the code in React and it can actually make multiple files; it is not limited to one file. It can make as many files, folders, and stuff as it wants. And it's all pretty useful because it's React code that you can actually download and use.

Plus, if you do wish to change or edit the code itself, then you can easily edit it here manually as well. It is almost like a mini code editor itself here which is quite awesome. You also get the file tree view here and you can easily navigate through the files that it makes. The interface is quite slick and you can see that in a bit it will show the stuff to you.

Key Features

  • Error Detection & Autofix: If it faces an error in the code, then it can detect that as well and give you an option to autofix by just hitting a button if that happens. It's quite similar to how things like Bolt or other stuff works.
  • Checkpointing: It has also got checkpointing. You can see that it creates a checkpoint along the way and you can see which files were changed in each checkpoint as well as you get the option to roll back if something's wrong and you want to undo the changes.
  • File Management: You can also create custom files as well as custom folders and even upload custom files as well.
  • Live Preview & Sharing: You can see the preview here as well along with the options to see the console log here and you can also share it with anyone else with a link if you want to do that.
  • Exporting: You can also download the whole project as a zip as well and then use it locally if you wish to use it that way. You can also make a copy of this app and make some more changes there or stuff like that.

It is actually really good. It's probably one of the best interfaces that I've seen yet for a vibe coder thing. It's pretty minimalistic and just has enough features that you expect from such stuff along with options to manually edit any code or anything. Also, if you think that the context is filling up or something, then you can also reset the conversation with the reset option at the top of the assistant panel. You can also hide the panels with these options like you can hide the assistant panel or the code editor or the preview.

Also, make sure that you save the project after each iteration as it requires you to do that in order to make sure that the share links work well as well as so you can come back to it later and continue the work as well.

Iterating on the Design

I'm also going to ask it to make some changes as well. So I'm going to ask it to make the colors red here. And you can again type it here and attach any reference or project requirement or anything here as well.

Now if I send it then you can see that it will again go ahead and do some thinking here as well. It is pretty good in edits as well and doesn't write code from scratch. Rather, it uses diff patterns in order to change the chunks of code, which is awesome because it makes the editing and iterating faster than writing the whole file again from scratch.

Anyway, in a bit it gets done and you can see that this looks pretty awesome and it did the changes quite well. You again get this saved and then come back to this later in order to do more changes. Or you can also download it and use it again if that's something you want to do as it allows you to use it locally and then continue locally or host it or something like that.

I found it pretty useful. Many people don't use it as often, but this is probably one of the best AI coders out there right now, especially after the recent upgrade that they silently did on this by adding the options of creating multiple files and everything. Plus, it's fully free and it's really unlimited. So, you can try it as much as you want and use it to do some cool stuff as well. It's really useful and you can even use it to integrate Gemini in your apps if that's something you like. That's majorly about it. Go ahead and give this a try for yourself as well. Overall, it's pretty cool.