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# Build full-stack AI apps in minutes with Firebase Studio

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## Description

The way we build software is fundamentally changing with AI-centric tools. This session covers how Project IDX helps you build and ship full-stack apps faster. Your codebase becomes context for Gemini, enabling powerful agentic capabilities in your editor. Generate and modify code or execute commands, all with natural language prompts. You’ll leave this session with strategies to ship better software, quicker.

Speakers: Kirupa Chinnathambi, Rody Davis

Check out the cloud session track from Google I/O 2025 → https://goo.gle/io25-gct-yt 
Check out out all the Firebase sessions from Google I/O 2025→ https://goo.gle/io25-firebase-yt 
Check out all sessions from Google I/O 2025→ https://goo.gle/io25-sessions-yt 

Subscribe to Firebase → https://goo.gle/Firebase

Event: Google I/O 2025

Products Mentioned: Cloud

## Transcript

**0:00** · \[MUSIC PLAYING\] KIRUPA CHINNATHAMBI: Hi, everyone.

**0:06** · Today, we're going to learn about how Firebase Studio can help you build high-quality full-stack AI apps quickly.

**0:12** · My name is Kirupa Chinnathambi, and I'm a PM on Firebase Studio.

**0:16** · I'm joined by my colleague Rody Davis, who is a developer relations engineer also on the same team.

**0:21** · We're going to start by getting a 30,000-foot overview of how app development has changed and why we built Firebase Studio.

**0:28** · We will follow up with a deeper look at Firebase Studio's marquee features, along with a live demo that really highlights the breadth and depth of capabilities that can help you be productive.

**0:38** · So there are three big changes to app development over the years that played a big role in us building Firebase Studio.

**0:44** · First, app development has gotten really difficult.

**0:47** · Building apps today is time consuming, often frustrating, and filled with numerous hoops we need to jump through.

**0:53** · And this complexity spans the full software development lifecycle.

**0:57** · All stops on this path are more complicated now than they've ever been.

**1:02** · This complexity is particularly frustrating if you're a professional developer.

**1:06** · You and I don't have the luxury of skipping steps or cutting corners.

**1:10** · Some of the complexities you need to wrangle include answering what your technology stack should be.

**1:16** · What are your dependencies?

**1:18** · Is what you're building secure, scalable, and performant?

**1:22** · Depending on your project, your team, and the industry you're working in, the types of questions you need to answer can be numerous and varied.

**1:29** · All of this can be hugely overwhelming.

**1:32** · The software development lifecycle should be smoother and easier for all of us to navigate as we build our apps.

**1:39** · A trend that we've been observing for some time, that really accelerated in the last few years, is that software development is becoming more decentralized and collaborative across devices, geographies, and time zones.

**1:50** · It used to be that all we needed to get our apps built was our primary, often powerful, computer.

**1:56** · Now, over time, we started to take our work onto our personal devices.

**1:59** · These could be our laptops, phones, tablets, and an even smaller devices like watches.

**2:04** · Beyond just building our apps across a variety of devices, we also now work from a variety of locations.

**2:10** · It could be a coffee shop.

**2:12** · It could be a secondary workplace.

**2:14** · It could even be our homes.

**2:15** · To add more color to the situation, we now collaborate closely with other people, each of whom could be working on the same project from different locations, different devices, and maybe even different time zones.

**2:27** · Third, and one that is probably very top of mind for all of us, is the role AI assistants and powerful LLMs are playing in completely changing how we as developers build apps.

**2:38** · This visualization really drives home the two extreme workflows you, me, and our teams are likely adopting when building apps.

**2:45** · On one end, we have a world where we are in the driver's seat, and the AI plays a purely assistive role.

**2:51** · On the other end, we have a world where the AI is doing almost all of the heavy lifting.

**2:56** · We're playing more of a consulting role and nudging the AI into the right direction if needed.

**3:01** · The complexity of problems AI can solve, though, has grown by leaps and bounds.

**3:05** · Today, a quarter of all new code at Google is generated by AI.

**3:09** · Beyond just productivity, use of AI also tends to increase overall satisfaction and happiness.

**3:15** · Here's where a study that showed individuals assigned to use AI were both productive and more happy than individuals and teams who didn't use AI at all.

**3:23** · This chart highlights what I said a second ago, where the use of AI pretty much leads to an increase in positive emotions and a decrease in negative emotions.

**3:31** · This is pretty powerful.

**3:32** · In recognizing these three major shifts, a handful of us who love developer tools got together a few years ago and asked, can we do better?

**3:40** · We landed on a handful of principles.

**3:43** · First, the ideal environment needs to be ubiquitous.

**3:46** · You should be able to build any app from any device, from anywhere.

**3:50** · You and I should have easy access to integrated solutions, not individual puzzle pieces that we have to figure out how to combine in the right way.

**3:58** · AI assistants shouldn't just be limited to coding scenarios or tacked on as an afterthought.

**4:04** · AI assistance needs to be thoughtfully woven throughout the entirety of the software development lifecycle.

**4:09** · Now, software development has always been a collaborative activity.

**4:13** · And we need to ensure that our tools help here, where we can be working across a variety of devices, locations, and time zones.

**4:22** · To help answer the question of "Can we do better?," we're thrilled to announce Firebase Studio.

**4:27** · Firebase Studio is an integrated and extensible agentic workspace to build, run, and manage web apps, cross-platform mobile apps, backend services, and more.

**4:37** · Let's walk through some of the high-level features that Firebase Studio brings to the table.

**4:41** · First, it is fully web-based.

**4:43** · All you need is a browser and an internet connection.

**4:45** · And just because it's in a browser, though, does not mean you have to sacrifice capabilities.

**4:50** · You have a full Cloud VM with access to the file system, terminal, and other necessary commands.

**4:55** · It's also built on the familiar VS Code environment.

**4:59** · You have easy starting points, configurable using a technology called NixOS.

**5:04** · AI assistance and collaborative features are integrated throughout.

**5:08** · Now, Firebase Studio may look very familiar to many of you.

**5:11** · It is built on the learnings we received from the hundreds and thousands of you who use Project IDX and gave us your feedback.

**5:18** · We actually went public with Project IDX at I/O just last year.

**5:21** · So it's great to highlight the evolution of IDX into Firebase Studio with you all at this year's I/O conference.

**5:27** · Now, let's take a look at Firebase Studio and walk through its most common features.

**5:32** · When you launch Firebase Studio for the first time, you'll have a bunch of options on how you'd like to get started.

**5:37** · You can start with our app prototyper, where you specify what kind of app you'd like to build using multimodal, natural-language prompts.

**5:44** · In this mode, you can ask us to build an app.

**5:47** · Once you do that, we first translate your request into something we call a blueprint.

**5:51** · Think of a blueprint as a one-pager or a mini PRD.

**5:55** · When you're OK with the requirements, we start building your app.

**5:59** · You can continue to interact with the AI assistants to fine tune the app's output.

**6:03** · You can draw directly onto the preview surface with our annotation feature.

**6:07** · You can select elements and describe the changes you would like to see.

**6:10** · Once you are ready to share your application with the world, you can choose to deploy to Firebase App Hosting or make your app temporarily available with our preview mode.

**6:18** · Now, going back to the Firebase Studio landing page, you can also create a new workspace and build it entirely from scratch or choose from a collection of templates.

**6:27** · We provide some of the most common templates available to you for easy, direct access.

**6:31** · You can explore our full collection of templates, which span the most common starting points for frontend, backend, mobile, and more.

**6:38** · If you want to go one level deeper, below the templates, we give you a lot of flexibility to specify how your environment is built all the way down to the VM-specific details, build tools, and more.

**6:50** · You can also bring your existing project into Firebase Studio.

**6:53** · You can choose to open your project from popular Git providers like GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab, or you can upload a zip file of your existing project from your local computer.

**7:03** · Independent of how you get started with building your app in Firebase Studio, we give you full agentic capabilities throughout with our AI assistants.

**7:10** · Changes you ask for can be made to a single line of code or to an entire code base.

**7:14** · This is the power of Gemini exposed through our app development environment.

**7:19** · Beyond our built-in AI systems, agents from Gemini Code Assist will also be fully available.

**7:24** · Our goal is to ensure you have the flexibility to choose how much AI assistance you want.

**7:29** · You can use a lot of AI, or you can use some AI.

**7:32** · You're fully in control.

**7:34** · Lastly, we talked about the importance of collaboration when it comes to building apps.

**7:38** · Firebase Studio also share your entire workspace with your colleagues and build apps in real time just as naturally as you might if you're working physically side by side with someone.

**7:47** · Before I hand it over to Rody, who will walk through some live demos, a main takeaway is that Firebase Studio is a professional tool designed for all developers.

**7:55** · Whether you're AI first, code first, frontend, backend, greenfield, or brownfield, we have you covered.

**8:00** · All are welcome.

**8:01** · Now let's turn it over to Rody.

**8:05** · RODY DAVIS: Hi, my name is Rody.

**8:07** · So now it's time to see Firebase Studio in action.

**8:10** · There are two main modes that you can start from inside of Firebase Studio.

**8:14** · The first is an IDE view, which you should already be familiar with because it's the same IDE from IDX.

**8:20** · And the second is a new app prototyping agent.

**8:24** · With this new app prototyping agent, you can build full-stack applications from natural language.

**8:29** · It will start by creating a blueprint for us to review, which we can modify at will, and then continue to iterate on in the app with the chat.

**8:37** · When you're happy with the overview, you can start the app generation, and the blueprint will be saved inside the project alongside the code.

**8:44** · The fully featured application it creates is backed by Next.js, connected to Genkit and Firebase.

**8:52** · If you're building an AI feature that needs an API key, we will create a Firebase project for you in addition to generating the API key.

**9:00** · As you request new features or modify existing ones, Gemini will update Genkit flows and wire up any of the multimodal requests and handling inside of React for you.

**9:11** · When you feel like the app is in a good place to share, we have an easy one-click Publish button that will take the Next.js application and deploy it with Firebase App Hosting.

**9:21** · As you make changes to your code, you can also create new rollouts by going through the exact same flow.

**9:28** · We also support other deployment options, too, which you can take advantage of in the code editor.

**9:33** · Firebase Studio has a powerful integrated development environment which lets you bring existing code bases with any stack configured by the Nix ecosystem.

**9:41** · And there's also many templates to get started with, with common frameworks and languages that you use.

**9:46** · For those that aren't aware, Nix is probably one of the most supported package ecosystems in the Linux world.

**9:52** · There's over 120,000 packages to choose from.

**9:56** · Every workspace in Firebase Studio is running on a full VM powered by NixOS.

**10:01** · This means that you can run most commands in the terminal that you would be able to locally.

**10:06** · This could be anything from setting up and configuring databases, to running Docker files, or even running both Python node and go all in the same terminal at the same time.

**10:16** · Just like how the app prototyper has a powerful chat, we also have the full capabilities of Gemini right inside of our IDE.

**10:23** · Gemini can read and write files and run terminal commands with the context of your project.

**10:29** · You can also choose a custom model with an API key, upload attachments or drawings, and have multiple chat histories persisted for later.

**10:37** · There are so many more things we did not cover, but make sure to check out our Firebase YouTube channel for more videos and our blog for any updates.

**10:44** · Head over to Firebase Studio to learn more and try it out for yourself.

**10:48** · We are in preview now, and we would love feedback on the product for things that are going great and things that can be improved.

**10:53** · Thanks for watching, and we can't wait to see what you'll build with Firebase Studio.

**10:57** · \[MUSIC PLAYING\]