Transcript
I just built a fully functional CRM platform in under 10 minutes using AI. Not just a prototype or vibe-coded app, I'm talking about real, production-ready business software. Today, we're diving into Softr, and specifically, their new AI Co-Builder feature, which lets you build actual systems your team or clients can use.
In this video, I am going to build a complete application and show you exactly why Softr is different from typical vibe-coding tools. To get started, just head on over to studio.softr.io. Once you land on the main interface, you will see create new app at the very top.
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Note from Softr: If you're looking to build something similar to the CRM in this video without prompting from scratch, you can start instantly with our pre-built AI CRM template.
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We can start from scratch, start with a template, or generate with AI. We are going to jump right into this third option and describe what we want to build today. My prompt is to build an influencer and creator CRM for a content creator or agency that manages brand leads, active deals, campaign deliverables, deadlines, payment status, affiliate links, and client notes.
I have a bunch of additional details as well, which I am just going to punch into the prompt box. Right away, Softr will ask us a series of questions to help refine our building intent. For tracking payments for deals, I am going to go with simple status tracking.
For how deliverables should be managed, let's go with the first option. For the pipeline strategy for leads and deals, I am going to go with the third choice. For how users will log in, let's select Google and click continue.
It asks if people can sign up on their own, and I am going to select that anyone can sign up. Next up is our app's main navigation layout, which is a side layout for desktop and a bottom layout for mobile. That sounds good to me, so now we get to play around with the theme of our application.
I am going to go with Arabica and hit apply. We get a quick preview once we do that, and it is looking really good. Now we just need to click create our app.
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Note from Softr: The AI co-builder acts as your technical co-founder. It builds complete apps, pages, and database schemas instantly based on your prompts, while keeping everything fully customizable later.
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Here is what is going on in real time. Softr is setting up the database, the pages, the navigation, and the business logic all at the same time before anything is actually built. Once the prompt finishes and it tells us your app is ready, we can click on try it live.
Here is our app called Influx CRM, which I think is actually a pretty clever name. The top header reads, hi Sophia, stay on top of deals, deadlines, and payment status. At the top of the page, I can click this dropdown and choose who I want to preview this as from my team.
I am going to stay on Sophia for now to preview the portal. The next section shows total leads, total deal value, and unpaid pending deals. I'm going to scroll down and check out some of these leads, where we have new records, contacted leads, and ones we are negotiating with.
We have Glow Up Skin Care, Arrowfits, and Brewcraft Coffee. Let's actually click on the Brewcraft Coffee TikTok bundle. We can see it is currently negotiating and that this is a referral.
We have a contact, estimated deal value, and the next follow-up date. We also have some raw notes stating we are looking at discussing five TikToks and 10 raw clips. Plus, there is a question about whitelisting and a paid usage add-on.
I can easily edit the lead as well. There is a stage dropdown where I can change the status from negotiating to contacted, and a lead source that I can change from referral to inbound. I can also update the deal value, perhaps shifting it to a $3,500 deal.
Really importantly, we have the next follow-up date. This is super useful because we can change when we want to follow up with this lead. Maybe we want to postpone for two days, and when I update this, our record updates successfully perfectly.
Everything is working nicely so far. I am going to scroll down from leads over to the active campaign section, which tracks from draft to contract sent to active. We have some filters at the top for the deal stage and payment status, allowing us to filter for active campaigns that are pending payment.
Let's say the Glow Up Skin Care client is all ready to go and completely finished. I can actually drag and drop this block over to the completed column. It simply drags and drops exactly like you would expect, and we even have a canceled column as well.
Coming back to the top on the homepage, I am going to click on tabs to view a dedicated leads page section. We can see our total pipeline value, total leads, and a detailed list of all our different leads. On the active campaigns page, we have our total deal value and open payments neatly organized along with the deal stage, start date, end date, and value.
Look at this, we even have an Ask AI section right inside the app. We could ask the AI, what is the total value of all deals currently categorized as unpaid? The response tells us the total value of unpaid deals is $15,500.
That conversational feature is just a really useful tool to have natively on your platform. For the last two sections of the portal, we have deliverables and very important contact information. We have all of our different contacts mapped, and again, everything is nicely organized.
At the very top, we are currently on the desktop preview, but I can click on the tablet view to see how the interface adapts. Of course, we have a mobile view as well, so you can see exactly what the responsive design looks like across different devices. The key here is that all of our pages and features are working right out of the box.
Let's quickly jump over to the user preview toggle at the top. Depending on who you preview this app as, whether it is a team member or an admin, the interface will look a little bit different. If I click on Oliver, who is an admin, the app layout changes based on his authentication permissions.
In the case of Oliver, I can click on a secure payments tab and view all the different transactions going on. This backend payment visibility is something that is not available to a standard team member. I am going to click on edit at the very top right to return to the builder interface.
Here is something really cool with Softr. If I want to change a layout or a style, I do not necessarily have to re-prompt the AI. I can just click, drag, and edit directly in the platform, which gives a nice level of creative control.
Just like the interface tip points out, clicking on any block to edit manually will open a settings panel on the right. Let's put that to the test. I am going to click on a block, and the configuration panel opens where we can access source, content, and styles.
Let's play around with the styles and look at the different dropdowns for the container itself. We have block padding configurations, title and subtitle settings, and chart axis rules. Maybe I want to make this block rounder, and as I tweak the settings, we can immediately see the visual adjustments being applied.
On the left panel, we have global pages, themes, and settings that we can adjust. By clicking on pages, I can see all the different structural pages making up my platform. I am on the homepage right now, but if I want to add a page, it is as easy as clicking the add button here.
Next up is the theme section where we can change our primary colors and typography for headings and body text. For the body text, I am going to make a quick adjustment with the font, and it globally changes the typography right away. We can tweak these global styles and hit save, instantly applying that new text finish across the CRM.
We have been looking at the visual user interface this entire time, but let's come over to the data section. What you are seeing is a full relational database, visual like a spreadsheet, but structured like a real application backend.
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Note from Softr: What you're seeing here is Softr Databases. While Softr integrates beautifully with external data sources like Airtable and Google Sheets, using our native database is the most powerful way to manage data directly within Softr for maximum performance.
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Because my platform is an influencer and creator CRM, I have all the different team members stored directly within our database. The user role is mapped on the right side, so we can easily see who is an admin and who is a standard team member.
This primary table holds all the users, and the next table over is our external contacts. This holds all the clients and third parties that we are actively working with. Following that are the leads, representing the pipeline contacts that we want to convert into paying deals.
We have even more tables generated automatically by the AI system, including active deals, deliverables, and affiliate links. Let's bounce over to user management as well to see how authentication works. The user section is home to our login parameters, managing our signup flows, single sign-on logic, and app security.
Here we explicitly govern all of our users, user groups, data restriction filters, and automated notifications. This structured approach to data logic and secured user access is the exact key difference when building real software over generic visual prototypes.
