Its surprising just how many different ways there are to vibe code a app in the Power Platform, at last count I had 6, but I'm pretty sure I have missed a few. So I thought it would be a good idea to compare a few of them.
I'm limiting my list to just Code replated Power Apps (so skipping Plan Designer, as it creates Power Apps not Code Apps).
In theory that means everything will be React Apps, but just for the fun of it I'm throwing in my open source project Codeapp js, which builds standard HTML/CSS/JavaScript web apps and deploys as a Code App.
My plan is to do 2 demo apps and build them across:
- Generative Pages
- Vibe.powerapps.com
- CodeApp using GitHub Copilot
- CodeApp JS (using GitHub Copilot with custom Agent UI)
The only rules are that the same prompt should be used, and each can have upto 2 follow on prompts to fix any small issues.
Also some call outs to be made:
- I'm going to use the model I think is the best at the moment, Opus 4.6, but for 2 of the options this is either no available or I don't know what is being used (but Im 100% certain it wont be)
- These are a very selective demo apps, with limited scope
- I'm only build everything twice, and as AI is nondeterministic you will get different results each time
- I created CodeApp JS, so I will probably have subconscious biases so keep that in mind
App One - Personal Profile App
This app is designed to create a quick one pager that shows our latest 10 emails and this weeks meetings. I chose it as it used 2 different connectors (office365 User and Outlook), used multiple actions per connector (my profile & and my profile image, my emails & my meetings). Its also should generate a mix of images, key information, and table data, so should push the design aspect of the solution.
And here's my prompt:
Create me a app that has all my key information to hand. It should open with a profile section, which shows my profile image, and other key information about me. Then it should have current 10 emails showing from, subject, when, and preview sentence. The final section should show any meetings this week, with time/date and title of the meeting.
Lets see how they did:
Generative Pages
Generative pages creates a React App like the other Power Platform solutions, but this one is designed to be embedded in a model driven app. This use case should still be possible, as it's not overly complex and sing those connectors is a definitely a possible use case.
I ran the prompt and sadly we didn't start well, it straight up errored:
Time for a follow up prompt, so I passed the error and asked it to fix it. And success it now showed a app, but.....
It was just place holder data, everything as hardcoded in the HTML. Time to bring out the final prompt, I asked it to make it dynamic and use the users connections.
Sadly its still a fail, it did get my details, but I think it got it from the SSO (like Power FX getUser() function does not use a connection, just the details from the top ribbon).
In the end I think the biggest issue is the model, GPT 4.1 is simply not good enough (in my experience nothing below 5.4 is at a good enough level, with 5.3 Codex ok).
The UI was pretty basic, but very inline with the Model driven app, so I think that's a win.
Vibe.powerapps.com
Power apps vibe is a skinned version of Code Apps (bit like what I did with CodeApp JS), When you look at the generated files you can see it is setup exactly same as Code Apps, with same power.config.json file, SDK, and TypeScript files.
I ran the prompt and it reasoned the right course of action, using Office 365 user and Outlook (I saw it reference support skills),
Sadly we had the placeholder result again.
You can see when looking at the power.config.json file no connections were created.
I did the follow up prompt asking for it to use the logged in users details, but after a bit of reasoning it said it had done it but in fact it had done nothing but create some follow on questions. I clicked the first option to get the users image but sadly again nothing happened.
I can't see the model used, but I suspect again it's 4.1, from the style it's definitely a GPT model (which is disappointing as it looks like generic AI generated content).
The good news was it performed less over engineering from previous testing, where for no reason it would spin up Dataverse tables and supporting Agents.
I also loved the UI, its clean and modern, and allows you to:
- Prompt edit (select an element in preview and ask for edit)
- Edit Code directly
Code App with GitHub Copilot
We are now moving out of the Power Platform and into VS Code, so this is definitely less Citizen Developer territory. It requires node and the Power Platform CLI installed, all easy but can be intimidating. You also have to run cli commands:
- Auth
- Environment select
- Initialise app
- Create Connection
The create connection requires you to create a connection in Power Platform first and get the connector name and connection id.
I ran the prompt and sadly we were back in placeholder world.
But I think this was my fault, as I hadn't added the connections first. Adding the connections generates connection TypeScript files. Adding them and it worked first time (and second attempt first time too)
CodeApp JS Plus
Code App JS is pretty much a skin on top of the GitHub Copilot SDK, so it uses all the same model, the main differences are:
- As stated it uses vanilla JavaScript instead of React
- UI to add buttons for cli commands
- Custom Skills and prompt/instructions
All that really matters in this test is the last, can custom skills/prompts make a big difference.
Amazingly it one shotted it and got it right first time (remember it using same model and harness as React Code Apps, and that would also have one shotted it without my mistake.
The big difference is the UI, as you can see that custom skill really helped (well I think it did, as it definitely doesn't look like the boiler plate UI's you normally see).
App Two - Kanban Board
No time for a slightly different app, this is more focused on data sources (Dataverse in this case), as I think this should help the built in tools more.
My favourite test is Agile Poker, but that is definitely not a minimal prompt app, so I went with my second, a Kanban board (like Microsoft Planner).
Create me a Kanban app, the app should allow the user to create and update tasks. The tasks should also have a status that can be Backlog, Ready, In-progress, Awaiting Review, Complete. Each status should be a bucket and the task card can be drag and dropped to change the status. The dataverse Task table should be used to store the tasks
Generative Pages
So first attempt with Generative Pages and sadly not a good start, stuck in loading hell.
A couple of prompt fixes and sadly we didn't get anywhere except improved error message popups.
At this point I called it, sadly Generative Pages just doesn't work for me.
Vibe.powerapps.com
After failing last time I didn't have much hope but boy was I wrong, it one shotted it, fully working, and looking pretty good.
Again it's a very GPT looking app, but I wouldn't be disappointed with it, and with the ability to edit code and "point and prompt", I think I could customiser it more if I wanted.
Well done Vibe, and now Im thinking this is definitely not GPT 4.1, its either GPT 5 or maybe GPT 5.3.
Code App
I had high hopes for Code Apps, but it decided to swap with Vibe this time. First I had a build fail, though was a quick fix
After it made a nice app, that generally worked.
But sadly It had a couple of issues, first white font on white background, and second when I created a task the whole screen went white.
I tried to prompt fix, but I had to give up, though I think one or more and it would have been all good (but I had to be fair).
To make things more interesting I decided to try with GPT 4.1, so that we get a fair comparison with Generative Pages.
Sadly a build error again.
And even when I got it to load I couldn't get any working functionality, and it looked awful.
CodeApp JS
Finally we are trying Code App JS both both Opus 4.6 and GPT 4.1
I used the CLI version this time, yep there is a CLI version coming soon, watch this space. Under the hood its the same as the VS extension.
And good news, it one shotted it again, and again it made a nice look (though this time I think a little more generic).
Now for GPT 4.1, and first attempt it said it did a lot, but when I opened it it had done nothing 🤦♂️
But after a prompt to tell it to actually do something it made something that looked ok.
Sadly I could not get the create to work, and there was no popup for the tasks, but I could move them, so had a working, List Items and Update Item.
Round Up
So what does this prove, well not a lot really as my sample size was far too small, especially for something as un deterministic as AI, but I have some thoughts.
The model is just so so important, Opus 4.5 was such a leap in performance (along with higher Opus and GPT 4.6), and if you are using a older model you are leaving a lot on the table. Additionally GPT 4.1 is so legacy it should not be used.
I really hope Microsoft does either of these 2 things:
- Allow frontier models to be used in Vibe.powerapps.com and Generative Actions (even if that requires additional billing), as vibe in particular has a lot of potential
- Build their own model so that its cheap enough to offer to everyone
And the second could be so cool. If you look what Curser did with KimI K2 as the base model and their training data from all of their uses, they ended up with Compsor 2, which is up their. Microsoft must have the same or better training data from GitHub Copilot, so if they built on top of a Open weight model that could be amazing.
The other thought is how important having skills and prompts/instructions are. They can get measurable better performance, and definitely create more visually unique solutions. And as this is limited to outside of the platform solutions, I would recommended learning some new tools.
Oh and Generative Pages is just not good (I tried loads more and never got anything good), it really needs to be deprecated and Vibe.powerapps.com used instead.
All the apps are available to download from my repo here: [https://github.com/wyattdave/Power-Platform/
Generative Pages
My Diary
Task Board
Vibe.powerapp.com
My Dashboard
Kanban Board_202604110917
Code apps (React)
My Week - opus 4.6
Agile Board four six - opus 4.6
Agile Board - gpt 4.1
Code apps (JS)
My Update - opus 4.6
Kanban Board - opus 4.6
kanban four one - gpt 4.1
Top comments (1)
thanks for talking through the experimental process and then giving me ideas on what next to explore