April 7, 2026 · How-to

"How do I let other people use this?", the wall every AI-built app hits

It's the question everyone asks the moment their AI-built app works. Here's exactly what's stopping you from sharing it, and the simplest way through.

There’s a predictable beat in every conversation where someone builds an app with AI. The thing comes together, it works, there’s a little jolt of I made that, and then, almost in the same breath, the question: “Okay, how do I let other people actually use this?”

If you’ve hit that wall, you’re not missing something obvious. The wall is real, and it’s the same one for everyone. This post is about what’s actually behind it and how to get through with the least fuss.

The quick answer

To let other people use an app you built with AI, you need three things your chat doesn’t give you: a public address (a URL), a way to control who’s allowed in, and somewhere to store what people do. The fastest way to get all three at once is to connect Backlit to your assistant and ask it to publish the app. You get a shareable link with sign-in and saved data, set up for you in the same conversation.

Why “it works” and “others can use it” are different problems

When your assistant builds you an app, it usually produces a single HTML file. That file is complete, but it runs in your browser, on your machine. “Let other people use it” quietly asks for three things that file doesn’t have:

An address. Other people can’t reach a file on your laptop. They need a link, something.something, that points at a running copy of the app.
A door. Most apps you’d actually share aren’t for the whole internet. A family planner, a team form, a client tool all need to know who’s allowed in. That’s sign-in plus a list of who’s permitted.
A memory. An app people use has to remember things between visits and between people. The moment data matters, you need storage that’s safe and separated per person.

None of these is exotic. They’re just three small engineering jobs that have nothing to do with the app you set out to build, and stacked together, they’re the reason a ten-minute idea stalls for a week or never ships at all.

The detours people take first

Most people try the obvious things before they find the real path:

Sending the file. You email the .html and hope. The recipient gets a file, not an app; nothing saves; anything that talks to a server breaks. Fine for “look what I made,” useless for “use this.”
Sharing your screen. They can watch; they can’t touch. Close the lid and it’s gone.
Dropping it on a static host. Now there’s a link. Progress. But static hosts give you the address and stop there. No door, no memory. You’re back asking your assistant to help you bolt on a login and a database, which is its own project.

Each detour solves one third of the wall and leaves the other two standing.

The way through

The reason the wall feels so abrupt is that the building moved into a conversation but the sharing didn’t. The fix is to let the same assistant that built the app also publish it.

That’s what Backlit does. It’s a host that already includes the door and the memory, and it plugs into Claude and ChatGPT as a connector, so your assistant can put the app live for you:

Connect Backlit once. Add it as an MCP connector in Claude or ChatGPT (one URL: https://mcp.backlit.run/mcp).
Ask it to publish. In the same chat, say “publish this and let my team use it.”
Share the link. Your app is live at its own address, the right people are on the allowlist, and their data is saved.

The three jobs behind the wall don’t vanish. They get absorbed into the place the app lives, so you never have to do them by hand.

What you’ll have on the other side

A real link on backlit.run you can text or email to anyone.
Sign-in by magic link, Google, or Microsoft, limited to the emails or domain you choose. Private by default. Nothing’s exposed unless you make it public. Sign-in and access control are where apps built with AI most often get hacked, so having that layer managed rather than hand-coded is the whole point (how to keep an app you built with AI from getting hacked).
Per-person data, isolated and saved, plus shared data for the whole app.

And, deliberately, no AI running inside the app. The intelligence was spent building it; what’s live is plain, fast, predictable HTML. That’s what keeps it a couple of dollars a month instead of a per-visit bill.

When the wall is telling you something

Occasionally the wall is a hint that the app wants to be something bigger: a multi-screen product with its own server and build process. Backlit isn’t for that; it’s for the enormous middle ground of small, genuinely useful single-page apps that just need to get off your screen. If that’s what you’ve got, the wall is thinner than it looks. See how it works →

Built an app with Claude or ChatGPT? Get early access to Backlit and share it in seconds.