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Build & deploy a GenBI app

GenBI turns your project's context layer into a shareable, browser-side dashboard, powered by wren-core-wasm, and ships it to your own Vercel or Cloudflare Pages account. You never type the wren genbi commands yourself: you describe the dashboard you want in plain language, and your agent drives the CLI to produce a public URL.

This guide shows how to talk to your agent to get there: how to ask for a dashboard and how to ask it to deploy. For the underlying commands and every flag, see the wren genbi CLI reference.

Before you start​

You need two things:

  • A Wren project: the context layer the dashboard reads from. If you don't have one yet, connect a data source first.
  • An agent with the wren CLI: any coding agent that can run shell commands. The agent loads its own GenBI playbook on demand via wren skills get genbi, so you don't have to teach it the workflow.

That's it. From here on you just have a conversation.

Create a dashboard​

Describe what you want in natural language. The agent figures out the queries, picks the charts, and assembles the app. Iterate with it the same way you would iterate with a teammate:

User:  My project is in ~/forecast. Show me last week's forecast by product.
User:  And the 8-week trend.
User:  Turn this into an interactive dashboard I can filter by product and OSAT, then share.
Agent: Built it and ran the checks. Want to preview locally or deploy?
User:  Preview first.
Agent: Serving at http://127.0.0.1:8848/
User:  Make the OSAT chart a share-of-total, and lighten the palette.
Agent: Updated. Refresh the preview.

Behind each turn, the agent is doing the deterministic work for you. You do not have to run any of it:

  • Gets the authoritative build instruction from the CLI (it knows your live project facts and the pinned wasm version).
  • Authors the app under apps/<name>/, following that instruction, choosing the charts and layout that answer your question.
  • Records and checks the app so it's deploy-ready, including a secret scan that refuses to ship inlined credentials.
  • Previews it locally when you ask, so you can see it before anyone else does.

If you want to see exactly which commands these map to, they're all in the CLI reference.

Snapshot vs live data​

This is the one real choice you'll make in the conversation. Tell the agent which you want (it defaults to snapshot):

ModeWhere the data livesUse it for
snapshot (default)Bundled with the app and queried client-side via wasmDemos, reports, small data, dlt-pipeline output, fully serverless
liveThe app calls back to your warehouse/API at view timeProduction-scale or always-fresh data; needs a CORS-enabled endpoint and never inlined credentials

A snapshot freezes the numbers at build time, so it's perfect for a report you hand off. Pick live when the dashboard has to stay current.

Preview before you share​

Just ask:

User:  Preview it locally.
Agent: Serving at http://127.0.0.1:8848/

The agent serves the built app on your machine so you can click through it before deploying anything. Refine in the same breath ("make this a bar chart", "drop the OSAT filter") and the agent rebuilds.

Deploy it​

GenBI ships to your own Vercel or Cloudflare Pages account, the two providers supported today (Vercel is the default). When you're happy, ask the agent to ship it:

User:  Deploy it to Vercel.
Agent: I need a VERCEL_TOKEN. Add it to ~/.wren/.env, then tell me.
User:  Done.
Agent: Deployed to <preview-url>
User:  Ship it to production.
Agent: Promoted to <production-url>

A few things worth knowing so the conversation goes smoothly:

  • You supply the deploy token, not the agent. Add VERCEL_TOKEN (or CLOUDFLARE_API_TOKEN plus CLOUDFLARE_ACCOUNT_ID) to your environment or a .env file. Tokens are never passed on the command line, so they can't leak into shell history.
  • Preview vs production. Deploys go to a preview URL by default; say "ship it to production" when you want the agent to promote it.
  • The deploy target is a public static host. Anyone with the URL can read every file the app ships, so never let the agent inline secrets. The pre-deploy secret scan is a safety net, not a guarantee.

The Vercel 401 trap​

New Vercel projects ship with Vercel Authentication turned on, so every deployment, preview and production, returns HTTP 401 to anyone who isn't logged into your Vercel account. The deploy succeeded; the URL is just gated. To make the dashboard publicly shareable, disable it once in the Vercel dashboard: Project → Settings → Deployment Protection → Vercel Authentication → Disabled. If you only need a private link for yourself, leave it on.

See also​