Build No-Code AI Agents on Your Phone for Free with the Replit Mobile App!

Our smartphones are now smarter than ever – thanks to all the AI-powered apps and chatbots. Galaxy AI, Apple Intelligence, and Perplexity AI’s mobile assistant, bring agentic features to mobile phones, making them even more functional. These agentic tools can actually automate and execute tasks like managing meetings, making bookings, doing research, and more – all through our phones. Interestingly, you can build AI agent apps for almost any task, without any coding, and absolutely free using Replit’s mobile app. This blog explores how to create an AI research agent on your phone using Replit’s mobile app.

Why Do We Need No Code AI Agents?

Coding is a great skill to have, but it may not be everyone’s forte. Which is why we now have several great no-code AI agent-building platforms available on the internet. These platforms are not just for non-coders, even coders and engineers use them for their simplistic and intuitive design. No-code AI agent-building platforms make it really easy to build simple agents and prototype complex agents. Moreover, they save the time spent in writing long lines of code that might even run into errors.

Here are some of the most popular no-code/low-code platforms for building AI agents:

1. Replit
2. Relevance.ai
3. Wordware

While all these platforms allow us to create functional AI agents on the web interface, only Replit lets us build agents right from our phones using its mobile app! So in this hands-on article, we will be using Replit’s mobile app to create an AI agent right from our phones.

What is Replit?

Replit is an online Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that lets users write, run, and share code directly from their browser or on mobile devices. It supports over 50 programming languages and offers real-time collaboration, making it ideal for beginners and experienced developers alike. While all these features are common across all online IDEs, what sets Replit apart is its two new additions – Replit Agent and Replit Assistant.

• Replit Agent: Converts natural language prompts into functional apps or websites, enabling rapid prototyping.
• Replit Assistant: Provides code suggestions, explanations, and debugging support to enhance existing projects.

The new tools on Replit’s interface help anyone build AI agents through simple text-based prompts. In this blog, I’ll be working with Replit’s mobile app to build a “Daily GenAI News Summarizer Agent.”  Let’s start.

Building an AI Agent on Phone Using Replit’s Mobile App

We will build a Daily GenAI News Summarizer Agent, which will search the web for the latest news in the field of Generative AI and provide us with the 10 most important news, a concise summary about each news, and some useful links about the topic.

Step 1: Download the App

Head to your App Store/Google Store to download Replit’s mobile app.

Step 2: Sign up

Create your account on Replit to get started.

Step 3: Create the Agent

Write a prompt regarding the agent that you want to build in the Replit’s Agent space.

For building the Daily GenAI News Summarizer Agent, I used the following prompt:

“Build a Daily GenAI News Summarizer Agent that would scrape the web for the latest news in the field of GenAI and then summarize each news and suggest more useful links to read more about that topic.”

Step 4: Implement the Agent

Once the prompt is sent, the Replit Agent starts processing it, and then suggests several suitable features for the agent. You can choose which of them you want to add to your agent. Once you have made the selection, the Replit Agent starts working on building a prototype.

Step 5: Test the Agent

Once the Replit Agent builds the prototype based on your prompt and feature selections, it prompts you to test the result on the web interface.

All you have to do is head to the web page and refresh it to see what the agent has built for you. Sometimes, you do not have to refresh it as the web page would have updated itself in the background.

Step 6: Iterate the Agent

Replit Agent comes up with the code for your project quickly and runs it too, but there may be some errors. So when you test the agent on the web interface, if it isn’t performing as it should, report the error back to the Replit Agent, so it can quickly start reworking on it.

I received a “Nonetype error” on my initial few attempts and I conveyed the same to the Replit Agent. It tried to correct the error a few times and told me to check all those attempts. After a couple of iterations, the Replit Agent decided to change its initial approach of scraping the web for news. Instead, it went to a particular site that had all the updated news.

Step 7: Accessing via APIs

Depending upon the requirement for your task, the Replit Agent can ask you for API keys.

For the Daily GenAI News Summarizer Agent, I was required to add an API key for Newsapi.org. Newsapi.org is a service that provides developers with a simple way to access news data from a wide range of sources for FREE. Think of it as a giant library of news articles that you can easily search and access using code.

All I had to do was follow the steps as mentioned by the Replit Agent, and I got the API key from newsapi.org. I pasted the API Key under the value field in the Replit Agent’s chat, and the agent started to incorporate it.

Step 8: Evaluate the response

Once the agent generates the result, check it to ensure that it’s as per your requirement.

I found that the Daily GenAI News Summarizer Agent was providing me with many links, of which not all were in English. Also, some of the news links were not even related to the field of Generative AI. So, I gave a suitable prompt to the Replit Agent to get the results that I wanted.

Step 9: Get help from Replit’s Assistant

In the free plan, you can only use Replit’s Agent for 10 check points. In other words, you can only use their AI agent 10 times. Each prompt/response interaction counts as one use. In that case, once you finish Replit Agent’s free credits, you can work with Replit Assistant.

Replit’s Assistant helps you correct any errors that might be there in the code that is created by the Replit Agent. If none, it can help you enhance the existing code. In the free plan, you can use Replit’s Assistant for 10 checkpoints only.

Step 10: Improve the output

After you have the desired result, the Replit Agent, on its own, suggests a few improvements that can add to your existing task. If you like them, you can incorporate them following the steps as above, or you can end the conversation with the Replit Agent.

For the Daily GenAI News Summarizer Agent, I liked the additional features of making it a daily newsletter and adding subscribers for the same.

Step 11: Deploy the agent

Finally, to share the agent that you have just created, you need to deploy it.

Currently, you need a paid Replit subscription to be able to deploy an app using it.

Replit Mobile App: Cheatsheet

Since Replit’s free plan comes with a strict limit, you can use the following tips to maximize the output from the free credits. In fact, this would also give you good exposure to the Replit interface, helping you decide if you want a paid subscription or not.

1. Instead of asking for one thing at a time, combine all your needs (like where to get data, how it should look, and any extra features) into one big, detailed prompt.
2. Try explaining the entire problem in a single prompt; don’t go back and forth. Use Replit Agent to build the main part of your project and use the Replit Assistant for small bug fixes and improvements.

3. There might be code or templates already out there that you can reuse. This saves you from asking the AI to do things that are already done.
4. The community can help you with debugging and give you tips, and it won’t cost you any credits.
5. Try to test the code the AI gives you before asking for changes. This lets you find many problems at once, so you use fewer AI interactions.

Applications of Agents Built on Phones

AI agents are, without a doubt, the future of automation and work and when added to our phones, they can truly transform our day to day lives. Some of the applications of agents built on mobile phones include:

1. Personal Assistance: A mobile AI agent can provide quick overviews of your daily emails or calendar events. It can then send push notifications to remind you of important deadlines or upcoming meetings.
2. Logistic Support-on-the-Go: A logistics support agent can use your phone’s camera to scan products and update stock levels instantly. It can also plan efficient delivery or service routes in real time based on traffic or distance data.
3. Personal Budgeting: An agent built for phones can take photos of receipts and extract expense details automatically, helping you manage your finances better.
4. Seamless Networking: At events or conferences, a networking agent can convert business card photos into digital contacts automatically in your phone. It can even suggest relevant sessions at conferences, and set reminders for each event you plan to attend.
5. Manage Bookings: An agent can be used to aggregate flight/hotel options from various websites and booking apps and choose the best or cheapest ones. This lets you compare prices and do the booking—all from your phone.
6. Work Coordination: In phones, a coordination agent can prompt your team members for their status and send notifications regarding the tasks that need immediate attention.

My Review of Replit’s Mobile App

Working with Replit’s Mobile App is a mixed experience of ease-of-use and some limitations. The Replit mobile app is easy to set up, and the interface is intuitive. A single text prompt is enough to activate the Replit Agent, which quickly starts suggesting improvements.

However, the Agent isn’t great for debugging—it’s best for generating ideas, while the Replit Assistant is more reliable for code corrections. The difference is clear: use the Agent to create, the Assistant to refine. The 10 free checkpoints for both tools feel limiting, especially for building anything beyond a basic AI agent. Once the paid plan expires, the assistant switches to Gemini 1.5, which only suggests changes, unlike the advanced version with Claude Sonnet 3.5, which can apply fixes directly. Despite these challenges—especially the checkpoint limitations and deployment restrictions—the app still offers a valuable platform for testing ideas through its elaborate prompts and user-friendly interface.

Replit: Mobile App Vs. Web Interface

The Replit mobile app and web interface offer complementary experiences for coding on the go. While the web interface provides a full-fledged development environment, the mobile app serves as a convenient companion. Here’s a quick comparison of the two.

Conclusion

Replit’s mobile app is a game-changer in AI agent development. As technology advances, we will see more capable SLMs that will soon power most of our mobile applications with Generative AI. The fact that Replit allows us to build, prototype, and examine apps directly from our phones opens up a whole new experience for everyone. Since it doesn’t involve code, this app is essentially for everyone—be it writers, coders, or even designers who wish to visualize their ideas in action. While this is just the start, we can soon expect many such apps and agents to run not only from the web interface but directly from mobile devices.

Frequently Asked Questions

Anu Madan

Anu Madan is an expert in instructional design, content writing, and B2B marketing, with a talent for transforming complex ideas into impactful narratives. With her focus on Generative AI, she crafts insightful, innovative content that educates, inspires, and drives meaningful engagement.