Appllama Usage Skill
Appllama is the design library of top-grossing mobile apps — their real screens, flows, and UI patterns, with revenue and download context. The MCP puts that library in an agent's hands: not just a research tool, a builder's tool. You study what already wins, then you build something better.
Pair this skill with appllama-app-design-skill for every design/implementation step — this skill tells you what to study; that one tells you how to build.
Ground rules (read first)
- Start with
get_credits— it's free. It tells you the balance, limits, and reset date. Pro includes 1,500 credits a month (they reset in full on the 1st, UTC); every other call spends 1 credit. - Go deep. Design language lives in the whole journey, not a sample — walk every screen of the apps that matter for the task, images included. That is exactly what the library is for. The one thing that's against the terms is harvesting: sweeping the catalog to extract the dataset itself rather than to answer a real task. That isn't research, and it's detected server-side.
- Media URLs expire in ~1 hour. Download/view what you study promptly. If links died mid-task, re-request that page for fresh ones — screen ids are durable, links are not.
- Ignore the watermark. Every Appllama image and video carries a small Appllama watermark in the top-left corner. It is provenance, not part of the screen — don't let it skew your read of that corner (status bar, back button, title), and never reproduce it in anything you build.
- Pagination is sequential. Every list response carries
next_cursor; pass it back to continue. You cannot jump to page N — and a cursor only works for the same query that minted it. If a cursor errors, drop it and restart from page one. - If you hit a rate limit, wait it out. The per-minute and per-day limits sit far above real research; on the rare hit, wait the stated time — don't retry-hammer.
- Errors are instructions. Tool errors are written to be acted on (expired cursor → restart; out of credits → tell the user their credits reset on the 1st and they can request more in Settings → Usage).
Tool map
| Tool | What it gives you | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| get_credits | Balance, limits, reset date. Free. | Session start |
| search_apps | 10 apps/page: name, revenue, downloads, rating, launch date, screens count, flow list with screen counts. Natural-language query + filters (revenue/downloads/rating/launch date/price/onboarding steps) + sort + board_id | Find the top apps for a category or need |
| get_app | One app in full: ratings breakdown, category rank, IAP pricing, top countries, flows | Decide if an app deserves a deep study |
| list_app_screens | 10 screens/page in journey order (welcome → onboarding → paywall → product), each with media URL, flow, UI elements, colors. Filter by flow or section | Walk an app screen by screen |
| search_screens | Screens across the whole library. mode="keyword" matches screen names + filters (flow, screen_type, element, app_id); mode="semantic" searches by meaning/visual language | Gather design references for one screen type |
| get_screen | One screen in full + up to 5 visually similar screens from other apps. Accepts screen_ref = app_id/screen_id (what appllama.io's "Copy Screen ID" produces) | The user pasted a screen ref; or drill into one reference |
| list_flows | The flow taxonomy with screen/app counts | Discover what flows exist for a category |
| get_flow_apps | Apps containing a flow, top revenue first | Find the best examples of one flow |
| list_ui_elements | ~38 UI-element families with counts (one call) | Vocabulary for element-level research |
| get_element_screens | Screens featuring an element family | Study how winners build one component |
| list_my_boards | The member's own appllama.io boards (screens / apps / flows) | Find their curation first |
| get_board | A board's full contents: screens with media, app profiles, or (app, flow) pairs | When the member curated a board for the task, START from it |
The screen_ref handshake: members can click "Copy Screen ID" on any
screen at appllama.io and paste it to you. It looks like
1393061654/spl_9i075 — feed it straight to
get_screen(screen_ref=...) and you're looking at exactly the screen they
mean, plus its closest siblings across the library.
The playbooks
| Scenario | Reference | |---|---| | Build an app from scratch (e.g. "build me a habit tracker") | references/build-from-scratch.md | | Make an existing screen better | references/improve-a-screen.md | | Flow & element research; general research method | references/research-methods.md |
Both build playbooks end the same way: the simulator loop from appllama-app-design-skill, repeated until you cannot find a flaw. Research without that loop is decoration.
Local reference boards
When you pull screens for study, save them into a local working structure — links expire in about an hour, but your notes and downloads don't:
research/
<category>/
apps.md # the shortlist: metrics, flows, verdicts
<app-name>/
screens.md # per-screen notes: id, name, flow, elements, colors
img/ # downloaded screens, in journey order
patterns.md # cross-app synthesis: the category's design language
Download the screens as you study them — synthesis happens with the images side by side, not from metadata. Notes and screen IDs are durable; re-fetch a fresh link from the ID if you ever need the pixels again.