Introducing Generative Spatial Apps hosted in CARTO
For as long as GIS has existed, a map has been the main way for us to communicate spatial insights. But a map is only effective when it adapts to the story, the data, the audience, and the device. Dashboards get you part of the way, but very often we realize that we need something more: a custom visual, a tailored application, an interactive experience built around a specific process or audience. This permanent trade-off between speed and customization is the reason why CARTO for Developers exists.
But now things have changed dramatically. AI agents have redefined who can build those custom experiences. Over the past year, we have adapted the CARTO platform to this new agentic reality, creating platform surfaces for agents to build geospatial apps on top of the leading cloud data warehouses, powered by the CARTO analytics engine and our visualization libraries. Today, you can already pair a coding agent with CARTO for Agents, and one person can build a working spatial application in an afternoon.
The app works. Now what?
Building the app, though, is only half of the job. Once it works, it still needs to be hosted, secured, and published before anyone in the organization can use it. For most analyst teams, that means waiting in the IT backlog for infrastructure, security reviews, and approvals, while the app sits on a laptop.
On the other hand, coding agents and CLIs are not meant for every team. Depending only on these tools to create custom spatial experiences still leaves out analysts and domain experts who know the data best but are not familiar with software development practices. That also keeps a lot of value from ever reaching the organization.
Today we are excited to announce the preview of two new capabilities that remove all of those barriers. CARTO Hosted Apps gives every spatial app a secure, governed home, deployed in one command on the infrastructure your organization already trusts. CARTO App Studio is a harness built specifically for developing spatial apps with AI, so anyone who can describe the app they need can build and publish it without ever leaving CARTO.
The last 10% is still taking 90% of the time
Building got easy. Shipping did not. Talking to teams and developers we noticed two clear patterns using AI to create custom applications.
First, all finished apps still need a home (a deployment) that is secure, reliable, and can be shared safely with the rest of the company. The options are rarely good: fight IT for months for additional resources, stand up cloud infrastructure yourself, or sneak it onto providers like Vercel or Github Pages. None feel like a good compromise. You shouldn’t have to compromise on security, your team should not manage cloud infrastructure outside of their skills, and you definitely should not have to wait months because IT is swamped with a growing, massive queue of unreviewed AI projects with architectures that potentially leak credentials or SQL or data.
Meanwhile, the people who could build (and more importantly, refine) the most valuable apps often cannot use coding agents at all. Procurement and licensing keep them months away, and the terminal, git, and deployments around the agent are a steep climb. One of our account teams heard it directly from an enterprise customer, about a use case they value at tens of millions of dollars a year:
“This is possible today with CARTO’s developer stack, but not in Builder. We don’t have developers or access to coding tools, and would prefer our data analyst team, who knows GIS and SQL, to build it.”
Either way, the result is the same: apps that could create real value never reach the people who need them.
Introducing CARTO Hosted Apps
CARTO Hosted Apps is a secure, governed home for your custom spatial applications, inside the CARTO platform your organization has already approved, whether they were vibe-coded or built by your app development team.
Using it takes four steps. Build the app you want, detailing your data sources in the carto.json manifest file, and using the carto-info.json to obtain authentication data — CARTO for Agents and the carto-develop-app skill already understand this pattern and make building this extremely easy. Point the CARTO CLI at your build folder and your connections, and deploy in seconds. Share it privately or with your organization, exactly like a Builder map or a workflow. Then iterate without fear, with full version history and instant rollback.
npm install -g @carto/carto-cli@latest
carto auth login
carto app deploy ./dist \
--name "NYC Citibike Pulse" \
--slug "citibike-pulse" \
--description "Animated 24-hour flow map of NYC Citibike rides"
# https://your-carto-tenant.com/app/citibike-pulse
carto app versions citibike-pulse
carto app rollback citibike-pulse --version <label>
carto app share citibike-pulse --org
Here is what is currently supported:
- One-command deploy, CI/CD ready. Scriptable from the CLI, so it fits into a pipeline or an agent’s workflow.
- Behind the CARTO login. Your SSO enforcement applies to every app. Login can be fully federated with SSO and SCIM.
- Acts as the signed-in user. The app shows only what that person can already see in CARTO. Same identity, same permissions, same connections.
- Hidden queries via named sources. No SQL and no schema in the browser.
- Private or shared. The same sharing model maps and workflows use.
- Versions and rollback from the CLI.
- CARTO Cloud and Self-hosted. Same behavior in both deployment models.
Why it matters comes down to three things. Speed to deployment: from finished code to a working URL your team can open in minutes, with no hosting, pipeline, domain, or TLS to set up. Security that applies to every app at once: apps reuse CARTO identity, permissions, connections, and named sources, so a security review or improvement made once applies to all of them. Pre-approved, with no additional expense: everything runs on the CARTO infrastructure your organization has already signed off on, SaaS or Self-hosted. Nothing new to operate, no new infrastructure to budget for, and no IT backlog to wait in.
App Studio: an agentic harness for your spatial apps
CARTO App Studio is a harness built specifically for the agentic development of spatial apps, and it lives inside the CARTO platform. It brings what coding agents gave developers to GIS analysts and domain experts who prefer not to work in a terminal.
It works in four steps.
- Start from a prompt. Reference your data, the use case, the features, everything you want in the app.
- Watch it build on real data. App Studio explores your CARTO connections and shows the working app in a live preview as it goes.
- Steer it visually. Click an element in the preview and say what to change; every step is a version you can revert.
- Deploy and publish securely. The result is a Hosted App, shared like any map or workflow, with the same infrastructure and governance controls.
Because it is a harness and not a generic chat, App Studio already knows how to build spatial apps the right way: the right layer for the data, dynamic tiling instead of local files, and widgets and filters computed in your warehouse. It inherits the security model of Hosted Apps and adds one thing on top: it uses your company’s vetted AI model. CARTO’s bring-your-own-model framework means you connect the AI provider your organization has already approved, as well as giving you access to CARTO Managed Models. There is no data replication or exfiltration, because App Studio uses the same live CARTO connections to your data warehouse, dynamic tiling, and filtering as the rest of the platform. And access is granular: share an app with a handful of users or SSO groups, using the CARTO access controls you already manage.
Why it matters: the people closest to the problem can now build the solution. The analyst who knows the data, the GIS lead who knows the workflow, the domain expert who knows what the field team needs. Not a mockup or a ticket, but a working, governed application their colleagues can open the same day.
Any spatial app, just a prompt away
We have been using Hosted Apps and App Studio inside CARTO for weeks, and the range of what people build keeps surprising us. A few of the kinds of apps our team has shipped:
- AI-first apps where users converse with the map and the data through an embedded AI Agent.
- Advanced analytical dashboards that combine vector, raster, and H3 layers with dynamic charts, cross-filtering widgets, and spatial filters over millions of rows.
- Interactive story maps with scroll-driven chapters and cinematic fly-throughs that walk an audience through a place and a point.
- Enterprise-grade business applications that wrap the map in your own process: site selection, territory review, risk triage.
- Data collection and editing apps where users draw an area, edit geometries, upload files, and write the results back to the warehouse.
- Branded experiences with a custom look and feel that matches your organization, not a BI tool.
Now available in Private Preview
CARTO Hosted Apps and CARTO App Studio are available in Private Preview for CARTO customers, with broader availability rolling out over the coming weeks. If you want early access, get in touch with your CARTO representative. To learn more, you can check out the Hosted Apps and App Studio documentation.
Not a customer yet? Request a demo and we will show you Hosted Apps and App Studio in action.
Frequently Asked Questions
What kind of apps can I host in CARTO?
Any static web application: a CARTO + deck.gl app built with a coding agent or a hand-built app from your developers. Deploy it with carto app deploy and share it with your organization.
Do hosted apps require users to log in?
Yes. Apps run behind the CARTO login and act as the signed-in user, so each person sees only what they can already access in CARTO. Login can be federated with your SSO, and users and groups can be provisioned with SCIM.
Does my data leave the warehouse?
No. Hosted Apps and App Studio use live CARTO connections and dynamic tiling. Queries run inside your data warehouse, no copies are made, and no SQL or schema is exposed in the browser.
Which AI model does App Studio use?
Yours. App Studio uses CARTO’s bring-your-own-model framework, so it runs on the AI provider your organization has already vetted. Alternatively, your account also has access to CARTO Managed Models, always ready for you to use.
Does this work for Self-hosted deployments?
Yes. Both capabilities behave the same way in CARTO Cloud and CARTO Self-hosted.
