A hex is a place someone stood in. A mini-app is one tile inside it.
Read this before anything else: a mini-app is a manifest, not code.
When you publish a mini-app you are publishing a declaration — a name, a set of capabilities, and where the tile may be placed. You are not shipping code. Every renderer that draws a tile is first-party code inside the HEXR app itself. There is no sandbox, and nothing you submit executes on anybody's device.
We say this first, and plainly, because it is the single most misread thing about the platform. If you are looking for a place to run your own code on someone's phone, this is not that, and we would rather you know now than after you have built something.
You choose an existing tile type and declare how it behaves: what it is called, what it is allowed to read, and whether it belongs on a personal hex, a business hex, or a community Public Hex. HEXR draws it. A user adds it to a hex they hold, sees exactly what it may read, and agrees or does not.
An app declares the least it needs. A user is shown that list in ordinary English and consents to it. The app is then handed only the slices that are both declared and agreed to — the intersection, never the union. Declaring more later does not widen an existing grant; it asks the user again.
Every submission runs a set of automated checks. If they all pass, the version is approved automatically and becomes current straight away. If any check fails, it is held for a person to look at.
We are not going to dress that up as a careful human review of every app, because it is not one. It is safe here for a specific reason: a submission is a declaration, and the checks verify a declaration completely. The moment third-party code can actually run, this policy changes.
Create a developer account — open sign-up, no invitation and no waiting list. Then write a manifest, check it in your browser, test the tile, and submit it.