Glossary & Appendix — AI Studio → Android Guide

API: A way for different software applications to communicate with each other.
API Key: A secret code that authenticates your app to use Google's AI services.
PWA: Progressive Web App — a web app that installs and behaves like a native mobile app.
manifest.json: A JSON file describing your PWA's properties — name, icons, colors, display mode.
Vite: A fast build tool and development server for modern web projects.
React: A JavaScript library for building user interfaces through components.
TypeScript: JavaScript with added type safety — catches bugs before they reach production.
Vercel: A cloud platform for deploying and hosting web apps with zero configuration, built by the creators of Next.js.
GitHub: Platform for hosting code and collaborating using the Git version control system.
Environment Variable: Secure config settings stored separately from code — used for API keys and secrets.
Standalone Mode: When a PWA opens without browser UI — looks and feels exactly like a native app.
Commit: A saved snapshot of your code changes with a descriptive message in Git.
Build Mode: Google AI Studio's agentic app-building interface — describe an app in plain language and Gemini generates, previews, and revises the working code.
Trusted Web Activity (TWA): A way to wrap a PWA in a thin native Android shell so it can be published on the Google Play Store while still running as a web app.
Antigravity Agent: The agent harness that now powers AI Studio's Build mode — it tracks your whole project across files and verifies edits rather than generating one file at a time.
Cloud Run: Google Cloud's service for running containerized apps that scale automatically, including to zero when idle. AI Studio's one-click Publish deploys here.
Google Cloud Starter Tier: A free way to deploy up to two apps from AI Studio straight to Cloud Run, with no billing account or Google Cloud project setup required.
Static Deployment: Replit's free hosting mode for prebuilt HTML/CSS/JS — serves files only, with no backend, which suits an exported AI Studio web app.
Secrets Panel: The area in AI Studio (or the "Secrets" tool in Replit) where API keys are stored and injected into your app without appearing in the visible code.