Capability guide
A plain-English tour of the product, with an example of what each part is for. No technical knowledge needed — just what you can build, and what happens next.
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Say what you need in plain English, the way you would explain it to a colleague.
Try it straight away. Ask for changes in the same words — “add a status column”, “email me when one comes in.”
One click puts it live at its own address, or yours. Invite your team, or open it to customers.
One
You describe what you want in ordinary language and Harbor builds it, hosts it, and gives it a web address. Changes are asked for the same way. Everything below produces a real, working thing — not a mockup.
| Way in | What you get | For example |
|---|---|---|
| App | A working tool with sign-in, saved data and logic behind it, refined by chatting with the builder. | A window cleaner describes a booking form. Customers pick a slot, the jobs are saved, and the week’s list is there each morning. |
| Website | A multi-page marketing site — pages, words, images, contact form — editable section by section. | A new consultancy describes what it does and has a five-page site with an enquiry form live before lunch. |
| Agent | A job that runs on its own, on a schedule or when something arrives. No screen to visit. | “Every weekday at 8, read yesterday’s orders and email me the three worth chasing.” |
| Import | Brings in something you already built — from a code repository, a zip file, or a single web page file — and hosts it. | A prototype built in another tool is imported, given a proper address, and kept working from then on. |
| Build in your own editor | Developers build on their own machine and publish to Harbor, with no build credits spent. | A founder’s technical co-founder writes the tricky part themselves, and still gets Harbor’s hosting, accounts and payments. |
Two
These come built in. You ask for them in plain words — “let people sign in and save their orders” — rather than signing up for separate services, and there is nothing to configure or connect.
| Capability | What it does | For example |
|---|---|---|
| Sign in with Harbor | Real accounts for your users without building a login. People can also use it as a guest with no sign-up. Your app never sees anyone’s email or password. | A training app remembers where each person got to, on their phone and their laptop. |
| Saved data | Four kinds, kept apart: each person’s private data, content only you edit, things visitors post publicly, and a private suggestion box only you can read. | A market listings site: sellers post their own items, everyone browses them, and only you edit the categories. |
| File uploads | People can upload images and PDFs, served back fast from anywhere. | A claims form where the customer attaches photos of the damage. |
| Email to your users | Your app emails its own signed-in users using reusable templates in your colours. Unsubscribes and sending limits are handled for you. | “Your booking is confirmed” goes out the moment someone books, with your logo on it. |
| Email people can reply to | Your app gets its own address. Anyone can write in, every message is kept as a numbered conversation, and replies go back on the same thread — a support inbox, built in. | A customer emails about a blank thermostat screen. It arrives as conversation #1042, the answer goes back from the app, and their reply lands on the same thread. |
| Email from your own address | Answer from [email protected] instead of a Harbor address. Two steps: forward your support email to the app, and paste a few lines wherever your domain is looked after. Your existing mail is untouched. | A helpdesk sold to three clients answers each one’s customers from that client’s own address. |
| Things that happen on time | One-off and repeating actions: send a reminder, update a record, call another system. Pause, resume or run one now. | A reminder email the day before each appointment, and a weekly summary on Fridays. |
| AI inside your app | A chat or writing helper, tidy structured answers, and a research mode that genuinely searches the web and cites sources. | A recipe app that suggests substitutions, and a research helper that checks current prices before quoting. |
| Take payment | Sell products at prices you set, charge once to unlock the full version, or sell monthly and yearly access. Money goes to your own Stripe account. | A revision app is free for one subject and $9 to unlock the rest. |
| Connect your other tools | Your app can post to Slack, write to Notion, add Airtable records or open GitHub issues. It only ever reaches what you connected and allowed. | Every enquiry from the site drops into the team’s Slack channel with the details filled in. |
| Use it from an AI editor | Your app can offer its own actions to AI assistants like Claude or Cursor, with a consent screen and each person’s own permissions. | An inventory app where the warehouse manager asks their assistant to “mark order 812 as shipped.” |
| Ratings, reviews and visits | Star ratings and reviews from real users, plus a count of visits and sign-ins so you know what is actually being used. | You see that 40 people opened the tool this week and it holds 4.6 stars from 23 reviews. |
Three
An agent is software with a job rather than a screen. You describe the job in a sentence and Harbor drafts it for your approval. Anything it cannot undo — sending, paying, deleting — stops and waits for your yes.
| Capability | What it does | For example |
|---|---|---|
| When it runs | On a schedule you say out loud, when something arrives at its own address, or only when you press the button. | “Every Monday at 9.” Or: forward an email to it and it picks the work up from there. |
| What it can do | Read and update its own notebook, email you, look things up on the web, read documents you gave it, and reach services you connected. | An agent that reads new applications, checks the notes it keeps, and emails you a shortlist. |
| It asks first | Anything irreversible waits for your approval. Everything waiting on you is gathered in one place. | “I want to email these 14 customers about overdue invoices.” You read it and press yes. |
| Answer your app’s email | An agent reads what arrives in your app’s inbox and writes the replies. It drafts for you to send, or answers by itself once you allow it. | Overnight support email is triaged by morning, each one with a draft reply waiting for a glance and a click. |
| Memory and documents | It remembers what it learns and what you correct, and can read documents you upload — quoting which one it used. | Upload your refund policy; the agent answers questions the way your policy actually says. |
| Test before you trust it | Run practice runs where reading is real but nothing is sent or changed, then see it marked against what a good run looks like. | Try the invoice chaser on last month’s data before letting it email anybody. |
| History and cost | Every run, step by step, with what it did and what it cost. | “Why did it skip Tuesday?” — open Tuesday’s run and read what happened. |
| Share an agent | Publish it at a link so someone else can see what it does and make their own copy. | Share your weekly-report agent with a colleague running a different region. |
Four
What happens after the thing is built: getting it in front of people, charging for it, and knowing whether it is working.
| Capability | What it does | For example |
|---|---|---|
| Your own domain | Point a domain you own at your app, with guided setup, a secure padlock and an ongoing check that it is really serving. | The booking tool lives at bookings.yourcompany.com rather than a Harbor address. |
| Getting paid | Sales go to your own Stripe account. Harbor keeps 2%. If your Stripe setup is not finished, the sale still completes and the money is paid out as soon as it is. | A $29 course sells overnight; you see the sale and the payout without touching anything. |
| Public listing | List your app in Harbor’s public gallery, where people browse and search, or keep it unlisted and share the link privately. | A free calculator gets listed to pull in visitors; the client portal stays unlisted. |
| Share as a template | Let others start from a copy of your app. Making a copy costs them nothing and never touches your live version. | A franchise shares one booking tool; each location copies it and changes the details. |
| Know where visitors come from | Make a separate link for each place you post, and see which ones brought visits and sign-ups. | One link for the newsletter, one for Reddit — by Friday you know which was worth the effort. |
| What to do next | A short prioritised list based on your real numbers, and you can ask for advice in your own words. | “Plenty of visits, almost no sign-ups” — with the one change to make first. |
| Email your users | Send one message to everyone who has signed in to your app. Harbor builds the list and limits how often you can send. | “The thing you asked for is live” goes to the 300 people already using it. |
| Draft the words | Harbor drafts a post or a tagline for you to paste where you want. It never posts anywhere itself. | A first-person post for a forum, written from what the app actually does. |
Five
One place that answers “what have we got, who owns it, what does it reach, and what is it costing us.” It matters most once several people are building.
| View | What it shows | For example |
|---|---|---|
| Home | What is live, what is running, what is waiting on you, and the last 30 days of spend. | Monday morning: two things need a yes, everything else is fine. |
| Apps | Everything built, its address, owner, what it connects to, its cost and whether anyone still visits it. | Three apps have had no visitors in 90 days — good candidates to take down. |
| Agents | Each agent’s last run, how often it ran, and anything it is waiting on. | The invoice chaser has not run since Thursday — you can see why. |
| Usage | What building and AI cost over 30 days, day by day, split by team and by what the money went on. | One app is most of the bill, so you look at that app rather than the whole account. |
| Connections | Which outside tools each app may reach, who connected them, and when they were last used. | Before a security review, one page answers “what touches our Slack?” |
| Activity, team and domains | Recent builds, publishes and changes; who can build; and every address you publish to. | “Who published this on Tuesday?” — answered without asking around. |
| Download the list | The whole register as a spreadsheet, for whoever wants it in their own format. | Hand finance a list of every app and its 30-day cost. |
Six
| Capability | What it does | For example |
|---|---|---|
| Team | Invite people by email into a shared workspace. Everyone there can build and publish; the owner handles the team and the billing. | Two colleagues join and pick up each other’s apps without anything being handed over. |
| Your code is yours | Download the full source at any time, send it to your own code repository, or pull it to your machine. No permission needed. | You hire a developer; they take the code and carry on, with or without Harbor. |
| Your data is yours | Export everything Harbor holds about you and your projects, or delete the account outright. | A customer asks what you hold on them; you export and answer the same day. |
| Build preferences | Harbor remembers how you like things built and you can read or delete any of it. | “Always keep it simple and plain” — so you stop repeating it every build. |
| Help | A help chat on every page that knows your account, and a bug report form anyone can use. | “Why did this build fail?” answered in the app. |
Seven
Building and AI features use credits; hosting is included. Credits you buy outright never expire, and a build that fails costs nothing. Enterprise is priced in conversation, based on where Harbor runs and what you need.
$0 / month
100 credits a month, plus 100 to get started. No card needed.
$19 / month
500 credits a month.
$49 / month
1,200 credits a month.
$199 / month
5,000 credits a month.
Talk to us
Harbor’s cloud or your own, connected to your systems, with the Console and hands-on help.
Top-ups without a subscription: 500 credits for $25, 1,500 for $70, 5,000 for $220. As a rough guide, a small app build is about 8 credits and a big change to an existing one about 44. Selling through Harbor costs 2% of each sale, on top of the card fees Stripe charges.
Your turn
If something on this page is missing, or you have a job you wish Harbor could take off your plate, tell us. The ideas people ask for most are the ones we build next.
What would you build this afternoon?
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