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Has anyone achieved 100% programmatic Canvas App creation without GUI interaction?

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Posted on by Mark_BH

Hello everyone

I'm trying to create Canvas Apps entirely through code without touching Power Apps Studio. So far, with Claude Code, I can get about 80% there with Power Apps CLI, but the holdup for me is the GUI requirements for control positioning, visual properties, and screen layouts.

From what I have tried or researched, Playwright quickly seemed like it would be too brittle, and manipulating .msapp files might be too risky.

Anyone already realizing what is just a goal for me? If so, how did you achieve this for creating solutions that can be deployed to production environments?

I'm open to any workarounds, undocumented APIs, or creative solutions to eliminate the GUI requirement completely. My goal is natural language in, working app out, zero manual steps.

Anyone cracked this?

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Michael E. Gernaey 51,578 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Has anyone achieved 100% programmatic Canvas App creation without GUI interaction?

Hi,

Partly the issue here is that the complexity of what you want also plays a huge part. You are talking about building Apps, but how do you know your app won't need 10 screens 3 PCF controls, and 2 Canvas App Controls.

I am not even saying its not possible to do it, but the app itself isn't going to be some super complicated thing. If you are talking some simple crud apps, you can pretty do that now, so yeah its been done because the pattern exists and doesn't really require natural language per se.

You would have better luck, using Power Automate Desktop, creating play books etc and having it all done that one and have it then spit it out, versus trying to generalize every possible variation of a Canvas App, regardless of complexity into a description...

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Mark_BH 10 on at

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Has anyone achieved 100% programmatic Canvas App creation without GUI interaction?

Hi @Michael E. Gernaey ,

Your feedback helped me refocus on Model-Driven Apps with Custom Pages as the main automation target instead of spending too much effort on Canvas Apps. That change made the approach more code-driven, ALM friendly, and portable, which is exactly what I was aiming for in a fully governed, end-to-end automation setup.

I really appreciate you taking the time to share your perspective. It helped me move the project in a more sustainable direction.

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Michael E. Gernaey 51,578 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Has anyone achieved 100% programmatic Canvas App creation without GUI interaction?

HI @Mark_BH

Love it a much better approach, you will be way happier in the long run :-)

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