Transform Your App Ideas Into Code with TinyDev’s AI-Powered Plan → Files → Code Workflow

Introducing TinyDev: AI-driven Code Generation

TinyDev is a lightweight yet powerful AI tool designed to convert simple application ideas into fully structured, ready-to-run projects. Leveraging the Gemini API, it operates seamlessly within notebook environments, following a clear three-phase workflow: Plan → Files → Code.

The Three-Phase Workflow Explained

1. Plan: TinyDev begins by generating a detailed project plan, analyzing the prompt to identify shared dependencies such as imports, variables, functions, and classes. This foundational step ensures that the generated code will be consistent and functional.

2. Files: Based on the plan, TinyDev determines the necessary files to build the application. It outputs a JSON array listing all the files, which could range from HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for web apps to Python scripts for backend services.

3. Code: Finally, TinyDev generates the actual code for each file, ensuring that all imports, variable references, and function calls are correct and that the code is syntactically and logically sound.

How TinyDev Works Under the Hood

The core is the TinyDev class, which interfaces with the Gemini API through the google.generativeai package. It uses carefully crafted prompts to guide the AI in planning dependencies, specifying file paths, and generating code for each file individually. The create_app method orchestrates this entire process, saving the output files and a README that documents the generated application.

Demo and Interactive Usage

TinyDev includes a demo function showcasing its capabilities with example projects like a Tic Tac Toe game, a news scraper, or a REST API. There's also an interactive mode allowing users to input custom app descriptions and watch TinyDev generate complete projects in real time.

Example: Importing Libraries

import google.generativeai as genai
import os
import json
import re
from pathlib import Path
from typing import List, Dict

This snippet illustrates the essential libraries used for interacting with the Gemini API, handling files, and managing types.

Benefits and Applications

TinyDev is ideal for rapid prototyping, learning AI-assisted development, and accelerating app scaffolding without complexity. It demonstrates how AI can automate coding tasks efficiently while maintaining code quality and modularity.

Final Notes

By breaking down the generation into clear phases, TinyDev ensures that each part of the application is logically connected and functional. It offers developers a practical tool to integrate AI into their workflow, powered by free access to Gemini models.