Google’s Tabletop AI experiment lets you build custom collaboration apps

Google Labs has opened a waitlist for Tabletop, an experimental tool that builds shared, collaborative spaces for personal planning. People drop in links, files and ideas, then prompt the assistant or pick a template to generate interactive tools like trip itineraries, dinner polls, expense splitters, chore charts and tournament brackets.

The pitch is simple: share an invite link in the group chat and everyone works in the space at once, like a shared doc. Access is limited to adults in the US for now.

We like this one. Most coordination among friends and families still happens in a messy group chat plus a few spreadsheets nobody updates. Letting people describe the little tool they need, and get a working one in seconds, is exactly the kind of everyday AI that earns its keep. It brings what's been called vibecoding out of the developer world and into the dinner-plans world.

The Verge compares the look to workplace tools like Asana and Monday, and that's the right frame. Those products are powerful but heavy. Tabletop's bet is that ordinary people don't want to configure software; they want a split-the-bill tracker that already works. If the generated tools are reliable, that's a real convenience.

The caveats are practical. Generated apps can be quietly wrong, and an expense splitter that miscalculates is the kind of mistake that causes real friction among friends. We'd want to see how Google handles errors and edits. There's also the data question: people will feed these spaces trip details, money splits and family schedules. Users deserve plain answers on how that material is stored and whether it's used beyond running the space.

And there's the age gate. The Verge points out that several of Google's own examples, like chore charts, clearly involve kids or teens, yet the beta is adults-only. That's the cautious choice for now. If Google opens it to younger users later, I'm watching for the safeguards that come with it, not just the features.

The bigger trajectory is interesting: if this works, the line between using an app and making one starts to blur for regular people. That's empowering, and it's also a lot of small, unreviewed software touching personal data.

Google Labs is the company's home for experimental products that often launch through waitlists before broader release or retirement. The tool was introduced by Google Labs design and engineering lead Roman Nurik.