What if an Instagram‑grade experience could be prototyped with natural‑language prompts, screenshots, and a live preview with no code required? Google Firebase Studio’s App Prototyping agent turns product intents into working UI, routes, and data scaffolds, while optional Gemini flows add AI features when you’re ready.
This guide walks through creating an app like Instagram “MindScroll,” a mindful, long‑form alternative to doomscrolling, and shows how to polish and publish it, all from within Firebase Studio’s browser workspace.
What You Will Build and What You Need
- A feed‑based web app with images, long‑form video, and a Notes canvas, plus navigation tabs for Feed, Notes, and Profile.
- A production‑ready preview you can publish with one flow in Firebase Studio, including billing setup and App Hosting provisioning.
What you need
- A Google account with access to Firebase Studio and the ability to link a billing profile for publishing.
- Optional: a Gemini key to enable AI‑assisted features such as captions or mindful nudges later.
Goal and Setup
The goal is to prototype “MindScroll,” an Instagram‑like app focused on mindful consumption, using Firebase Studio’s App Prototyping agent to generate UI, data, and AI features directly from natural‑language instructions and images.
Before we go into the prompting and building, start a new prototype.
Open Firebase Studio and create a new workspace for a web app, which enables a multimodal chat where you can describe the app and upload screenshots or sketches to guide the generator.
Confirm you’re using the App Prototyping agent, which can scaffold UI, APIs, and optional Gemini flows without writing code manually.
Step 1: Initial Prompt to Build an App Like Instagram
Paste this prompt (as shown in your first screenshot) to set the scope:
“A mobile app like Instagram focused on mindful content consumption and reduction in doomscrolling. The layout will be similar to Instagram, but the Reels Tab will be replaced with long videos. No short videos to reduce the doomscrolling effect.
After scrolling through 5 videos, a prompt to disconnect from the app will pop up.
It will also include photos, carousels, and, more importantly, “Notes,” which will be a 4:5 blank canvas for text content. Like a mini blog.”
Ask for a stack suitable for AI‑assisted prototyping, such as a Next.js + Tailwind UI scaffold that the agent can generate and preview instantly inside Studio’s browser IDE and preview surface. (This will be chosen automatically, don’t worry)
Step 2: Review the App Blueprint and Generate the First Build
Confirm the Blueprint sections match your concept: Features (Content Feed, Long Video Tab, Notes, Scrolling Limit), Style Guidelines (typography, iconography, animations), and Stack (UI with TypeScript/Next.js/Tailwind).
If anything is off or you want to add something else, click Customize to edit the blueprint directly or refine with a follow‑up prompt in the chat; then Save to lock the target scope before generation.
Click “Prototype this App” to let the agent produce the initial version, which compiles and boots a live preview you can interact with in the same Studio window.
If your concept uses AI later (for captions, mindful nudges, or content summaries), you can add a Gemini API key now or let Studio provision one automatically when prompted.
Step 3: Explore the Initial Prototype
In the preview, verify the feed layout: posts supporting images, long‑video playback, and a minimal action row (like, comment, save) that mirrors the Instagram pattern while aligning with the “mindful” tone shown in the screenshot.
Check that the Notes card appears as a 4:5 text canvas and that typography follows the neutral, comfortable reading style defined in the blueprint (e.g., Inter/PT Sans pairing).
Describe adjustments in plain language
Use the chat pane to request changes, such as “Increase padding on post captions,” “Add ‘View comments’ link below captions,” or “Show a disconnect nudge after five videos,” and wait for the agent to regenerate the preview.
You can iterate rapidly without touching code; if preferred, switch to the inline code editor later, but it’s optional at this stage.
There are a lot of missing things in this prototype, so let’s add more features and see if we can edit the application.
Step 4: Make Desired Changes With Natural Language Prompting
Let’s add 2 more tabs for “Notes” and “Profile”. Input the prompt to add these features:
“Add a Notes tab for text‑only posts (4:5 canvas) and a Profile tab that shows the user’s posts and notes.”=
Accept the update, then verify in Preview that the bottom/top navigation now includes Feed, Notes, and Profile with working routes and active‑tab state.
After the new prompt has run, there are now 5 tabs. This worked!
However, the Notes tab isn’t designed correctly as envisioned. To avoid such issues, make sure your prompts are precise and detailed. If you do not have the exact vision, you can keep iterating until you get it write.
Having said that, it is better to have a clear idea about what you want and prompt accordingly.
Let’s see how we can refine the Notes tab.
Refining the Notes Tab
Let’s give clearer instructions to get the Notes tab right. You can reference other examples in the real world or use other tabs (in this case) as an example for a better response.
“Let’s refine the Notes Tab. As of now, it is just one note. I want this tab to be scrollable with just the Notes content type. Similar to the Video tab, this tab is only for Notes posted by the users.”
Run this prompt.
This is the result. Looks like the prompt worked! However, there is a header on top that needs to be removed. You can remove the header with a simple prompt like “Remove the header ‘Notes’ from the Notes tab and it will work.
You can check other tabs and make any changes that you require with simple prompting.
But what if you need to change very specific parts of the build? Let’s take a look at the Select feature and how you can fine-tune the app.
Step 6: Use Select Feature to Make Specific Changes
Let’s see how you can use this tool by using it to remove the Header in the Notes tab.
Find the Select tool in the top right corner. Once you toggle on the Select, you can select any section of the app and describe a specific instruction that will only affect the selected section.
Select the Notes heading and put in the prompt “Remove this header”
The header is gone, and it doesn’t affect other sections.
Let’s try to change some UI elements.
Let’s try changing the icons to differentiate it from Instagram’s style.
Let’s change another UI aspect.
To change the play button UI design, let’s put in a simple prompt “Remove the circle around the play icon” by selecting the play button.
Selecting the icons and prompting them to change the icon style has affected all icons and works perfectly. If you need to change specific aspects of your app, it is better to use “Select” so that other parts of the app aren’t affected. With these two simple prompts, you can see that icon style and play button UI has changed.
You can keep adding prompts until you get an app that you are satisfied with. Moreover, you can take full control over the app design by switching over to “Code Mode”
Step 7: Switching to Code For Finer Control (Optional)
Vibe coding or even AI-assisted coding isn’t perfect. If you know coding, you can ‘Switch to Code’ for full control over the application. You can toggle between Code and Prototyping. You will find this in the top-right corner of the window next to Publish.
Addressing Vibe Coding Security Risks
If you are taking your application live to public, you need to assess the security of your application. Security is the biggest problem in vibe coding, and thoroughly testing your app for major security flaws is a recommended step.
You can go over this guide about addressing vibe coding security risks.
Alternatively, you can ask an experienced engineer to check the code or implement basic security checks with the help of tools like ChatGPT or Claude.
Learn How to Build an App Like Instagram
Turn your idea into a real, full‑stack social app. In this hands‑on Build Your Own Instagram Masterclass with JD Kilby (Ex‑Amazon Engineering Manager), you’ll build an Instagram‑style platform using TypeScript on the MERN stack, design and test scalable APIs, and see how AI‑assisted tools like Cursor speed up development. You’ll practice by implementing core features step by step and learn the system‑design principles hiring teams expect.
Step 8: Publish the App
Once you are satisfied with all the changes and the final version is ready, you can publish your application.
Click Publish in Firebase Studio; in the Publish your app panel, confirm or create the Firebase project, then click Next to continue.
Link a Cloud Billing account when prompted, click Set up services to provision App Hosting and required Firebase services, then choose Publish now; wait for the rollout to finish.
When deployment completes, copy the public URL from the App overview; optionally add a custom domain in the console and use the Rollouts view to revert to an earlier build if needed.
Conclusion
With Firebase Studio, you can build an app like Instagram with simple prompting and change the source code if you are comfortable with coding. Firebase Studio provides everything you need to take your app from ideation to production, without leaving its window.
The key with vibe coding or AI-assisted coding is to keep iterating and arrive at the application that you envisioned. It is recommended to have a clear idea about your features and be specific with prompting. If you are comfortable with coding, you can have full control over the application. It is also recommended to have robust security in place before taking it live.
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You’ll also get practical guidance from FAANG+ professionals on how AI is changing day‑to‑day engineering, plus frameworks you can reuse in your own projects. If you want clear, hands‑on practice and expert Q&A, save your seat now and start building with Vibe Coding today.
FAQs: Build an App Like Instagram With Google Firebase Studio
1. What is Firebase Studio, and how does it help here?
Firebase Studio is Google’s AI‑assisted workspace that turns prompts into working UI, routes, and deployable web apps.
2. Do I need to write any code for this guide?
No. All steps use natural‑language prompts in Studio; code editing is optional for advanced tweaks.
3. Can I add AI features like captioning later?
Yes. You can enable Gemini‑powered features anytime and plug them into the existing prototype’s flows.
4. How do I publish and share my app?
Use the Publish flow inside Studio, link billing if required, provision services, then share the generated URL.
