App created by anna-app dev stays hidden after review and publish

Developers
1

Hi Anna team,

I found a more specific cause for the App Center visibility issue I mentioned earlier.

It looks like the app I published was originally auto-created by local development, not created manually from a clean production app record.

Summary

anna-ppt-app shows as reviewed and published in the Developer Console, and its version also shows as published with a bundle_ready UI bundle. However, it does not appear in the App Center. My current suspicion is that apps initially registered by anna-app dev --slug ... are hidden from the App Center even if they are later completed, submitted for review, approved, and published.

App details

  • App name: anna-ppt-app
  • Slug: anna-ppt-app
  • Category: productivity
  • App version: 0.1.0
  • Developer Console app status: published
  • Version status: published
  • UI bundle status: bundle_ready
  • Latest version marker: 0.1.0 is marked as latest

How this app was created

  1. During local development, I started the app with:

    anna-app dev --slug anna-ppt-app

  2. This automatically created an app record in the Developer Console.

  3. Later, I reused that same app record instead of creating a new one manually.

  4. I filled in the listing metadata, uploaded/finalized the UI bundle, created version 0.1.0, submitted it for review, and it was approved/published.

Expected result

After review approval and publishing, I expected the app to become visible in the App Center just like an app created directly through the Developer Console.

Actual result

The Developer Console shows the app and version as published, but the App Center at https://staging.anna.partners/apps still only shows Anna Research. anna-ppt-app is not visible in the all/productivity views or through search.

Question

Is this expected behavior for app records originally created by anna-app dev --slug? If dev-created app records are intentionally excluded from App Center listing, could the Developer Console make that state visible or prevent submitting/publishing those records?

Also, is there a supported way to convert this existing app record into a store-visible app, or should I create a brand-new app from the Developer Console and avoid reusing the dev-created record?

I can share screenshots of the Developer Console state if useful.

2

Hi,

Thanks for the detailed write-up — you’re right, and this is a bug on our side, not intended behavior.

Root cause. Apps created by anna-app dev --slug … are flagged is_dev=True in our database. The App Center listing query intentionally filters out is_dev=True records as a safety net so dev placeholders never leak into the public store. Our design called for the publish flow to flip that flag back to is_dev=False once an app goes through real review, but that flip was never actually implemented — so any app that started life via anna-app dev stays invisible in the App Center even after being approved and published. That’s exactly what you’re seeing with anna-ppt-app.

Fix. We’ve patched the publish path so that publishing a version now clears the is_dev flag automatically. The fix will ship in the next anna deploy.

Going forward. Reusing the dev-created record is supported and is the right thing to do — you should not have to create a parallel app from scratch. We’ll also look at surfacing the dev-placeholder state more clearly in the Developer Console so this is less surprising next time.

Sorry for the friction, and thanks for the clean repro — it made this trivial to pin down.