How to Use Bolt.new

Bolt.new (by StackBlitz) turns a plain-English description into a working full-stack web app, running entirely in your browser via WebContainers — no cloud VM spins up before you see output.

Step 1: Describe your app

Type a prompt describing what you want to build. Bolt scaffolds a working project — usually React/Vite or Next.js — in seconds, not a static mockup but real, runnable code.

Step 2: Watch it build in the browser

Because it runs in a WebContainer (a full Node.js environment executing client-side), the live preview updates almost immediately as the project builds, with no deploy step required just to see it.

Step 3: Iterate with follow-up prompts

Describe changes in plain English — "add a dark mode toggle", "make the submit button red" — instead of hand-editing code for every small tweak. Bolt applies the change and the preview reflects it live.

Step 4: Edit code directly when needed

The file tree and code editor are right there alongside the preview, so you can hand-edit anything the AI didn't get quite right rather than being limited to prompting only.

Step 5: Deploy

Bolt has a one-click Netlify deploy integration, so a working prototype can go live without leaving the browser tab you built it in.

Where it bites

Bolt bills by tokens consumed per prompt and edit. Complex apps or long back-and-forth iteration sessions burn through the free tier's allowance fast — a handful of big multi-file requests can use up a day's free tokens.