Road to the Autodesk App Store: from internal tool to product

VaultPilot works. We built it together with Avant Leap, it is the first native AI agent for Autodesk Vault Professional 2026, and today it lives on three surfaces: a chat panel inside the Vault client, a command in AutoCAD and an Inventor add-in. I could call that done. But the goal was always something else: that any company can install it from the Autodesk App Store, and that road is turning out to be a whole second project.

I am telling this because almost nobody does. Posts about add-ins usually end at the demo: the tool working on its creator's machine, with their configuration, their paths and their permissions. Between that demo and a listed product there is a distance measured in boring details.

The installer is the first exam

An internal tool can afford assumptions: that a certain folder exists, that the user is an administrator, that the Vault version is the one in the office. A product assumes nothing. The installer has to work on a machine you have never seen, under security policies you do not control, and it has to uninstall without leaving traces. Writing that logic takes longer than anyone likes to admit.

The same goes for compatibility. At home, "works with Vault 2026" is a sentence. On the App Store it is a formal declaration per product version, and every new release of Vault or Inventor reopens the question. Maintaining a commercial add-in means committing to an update calendar that you do not define: Autodesk does, with every release.

Documenting for strangers

Internal documentation can be a chat message: "install this and ping me if something breaks". Product documentation has to work without the author nearby. A stranger, in another time zone, in another language, has to be able to install, configure and solve the typical errors without messaging you. Every question that reaches your inbox is a documentation page that was missing.

And behind that comes what nobody associates with software: a defined support channel, an update policy, a process for reporting problems. Product things, not code things.

The review exists for a good reason

The App Store has a review process, and I think that is a good thing. It is the same principle I apply in my own agents: you build the gate before you build the trust. A marketplace without a filter fills up with tools that assume too much, document too little and vanish at the first version change. Passing that review is not a formality: it is proof that the tool no longer depends on its creator.

None of this is glamorous. And that is exactly why I am documenting it in public: the distance between tool and product is where it gets decided whether something serves ten people or a market. If you are building your own add-in, or want one built for your team, let's talk: the road is shorter when someone has already walked it.