Where your app needs to live
Your app works, and you may already have a link to it. So why is there more to do?
Because right now your app lives in exactly one place: a conversation inside Google AI Studio. That is a fine place to build something and a poor place to keep it. This lesson is about giving it two more homes — one that stores it, and one that serves it to your students.
The Complete Journey
You have done step 1 twice now. The next two lessons are steps 2 and 3, and together they take about fifteen minutes — once, for this app, and about thirty seconds every time you change it afterwards.
Google AI Studio — the workshop
You know this one. You describe an app, it writes the code, it shows you the result, and you refine it by asking. It is genuinely good at that, and it stays the place you go to change this app for the rest of Part 1.
What it is not good at
Being the only copy. There is no history of what changed between versions, no way to hand the project to another tool, and nothing on your own computer. If the conversation goes wrong, or Google changes how any of this works, you have no fallback.
A workshop is where you make things. You do not leave the only copy of your work on the bench.
GitHub — the store
GitHub is where your app's code lives permanently. If Google AI Studio is your workshop where you build and test the app, GitHub is the storage unit where you keep the final blueprints.
The "Repo"
In GitHub, every project is stored in a "repository" (or "repo" for short). Think of a repo as a dedicated folder for your app.
You will not be moving files around by hand. AI Studio has a built-in Push to GitHub option that creates the repo and sends everything there in one click.
Why do we need it?
Two reasons. It is the bridge between your workspace and the public internet — Vercel reads your GitHub repo to know what to put on the web. And it is the copy you own: a full history of the project that you can hand to any other tool or host later. In Part 3 you will pull that copy down onto your own laptop and edit it there.
Vercel — the publisher
Vercel takes the files sitting in your GitHub repository and turns them into a live, public website with a real URL.
The Magic Connection
Vercel connects directly to your GitHub account. When you tell Vercel to deploy a specific repository, it grabs the code and publishes it.
The best part: Every time you update your code in GitHub, Vercel automatically updates your live website. You don't have to do anything manually.
"But AI Studio already gave me a link"
It did, and that link works. Google also offers Cloud Run for bigger projects. We do this second, longer route anyway, for three practical reasons:
- You end up with your own copy. The GitHub step in the middle is what makes the project portable — to your laptop, to another host, to a colleague.
- It redeploys itself. Vercel watches your GitHub repository, so pushing a change updates your live site on its own.
- Custom domains are simpler. Moving from a
.vercel.appaddress to something like mytool.myuniversity.ca is a few clicks.
The full comparison — including what you give up by staying inside Google — is in the next lesson, once you can see both options side by side.
Create your GitHub account now
You need it in the very next lesson. It is free and does not ask for a card — sign up at github.com.
Any username works, but pick one you would not mind a colleague seeing: it becomes part of your project's address on GitHub. Stay signed in — the next lesson hands you over to GitHub to grant AI Studio permission, and that goes more smoothly if you are already logged in.
Vercel comes two lessons from now, and that lesson walks you through signing up there — including the button that connects it to the GitHub account you just made. Nothing to do about it yet.