The AWS Serverless Application Repository enables developers to quickly deploy serverless applications that are pre-packaged with their required AWS resources. Applications in the repository can be used for common use cases like web/mobile backends, event/data processing, IoT, etc. Developers can publish their own applications to the repository for others to use at no additional cost beyond the underlying AWS resources. The applications are defined using the AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM) which provides a simplified way to define serverless resources like Lambda functions and API Gateway APIs.