The workbench
A tour of the screen you will spend your time on — the conversation, the six tabs, and the menu.
One screen per application, split in two: the conversation on the left, the application and everything about it on the right.
The conversation#
Where you ask for things. Type and press Enter; Shift + Enter makes a new line.
Attachments go in the same place — a screenshot of the report somebody wants, the spreadsheet the data comes from, a PDF of the form being replaced. See Showing it a file.
While a build is running the send button becomes Stop. Stopping does not throw the work away: whatever was finished is committed and saved as a version, and you can carry on from there.
The splitter between the two halves is draggable. Directing a build wants a wide conversation; checking what was built wants the whole screen for the application. You can close the conversation entirely. The width is remembered, per person.
Preview#
The application, running, as it stands right now. This is the working copy — every build changes it, and only your team can reach it.
Above it: Phone, Tablet, Desktop, and a size you type in. Narrow sizes render at their true pixel width and are scaled to fit, so what you see is what a phone would show rather than a desktop layout squeezed. There is also a button to open it in its own tab, and one to reload it.
Versions#
Every build, newest first, and the three environments across the top: preview, test and live. This is where things get shipped, and where you go back to an earlier build. See Versions and Deploying.
Your answer#
Not always there. It appears at the front of the strip when the builder has a decision that is genuinely yours — a table to correct, a list to choose from — and the build waits on it. See When it asks you.
Data#
What the application has actually stored — the bookings that came in, what somebody typed into the form, the test records still sitting on Live the week before launch. Tables down the left, records across the screen, and one control deciding which environment you are reading.
You can search it, filter it, correct a record, add one, take one out and download the lot as a spreadsheet. See Your data.
Visitors#
Who is using the deployed application: visitors today, visitors and pages over a period, a daily average, a chart by day, and the most-opened pages — separately for test and live. Nothing to set up. See Visitors.
Files#
Files the application publishes — a price list, a brochure, a form. These belong to the business rather than to the code: they need no build to change, they keep their address when you replace them, and they work before anything has been deployed. See Published files.
Settings#
Nine sections, covering everything about the application that is not a conversation:
| Section | What is in it |
|---|---|
| General | Its name, and what it is built on |
| Appearance | The browser tab, the icon, link previews, home-screen installation |
| Domain | The platform address, and a domain of your own per environment |
| Redirects | Old addresses that still get visited |
| Configuration | Named values the application needs but must not contain |
| Integrations | Email, SMS and Google |
| Access | Whether anyone can reach it, one password does, or people sign in |
| Data | Where its records live — its own, or one the workspace shares |
| Search engines | What crawlers are told, per environment |
Each has its own page in Running it.
The application menu#
Top right, behind the application's name:
- Stop / Start application — the preview's container. Stopping it frees the machine; starting it takes a few seconds.
- Settings
- Browse its data — the Data tab.
- Change how it looks… — a different design system, and what this one in particular should look like, in your own words. See Choosing a design system.
- Restyle to design system — appears when the design system has moved on since this application was built.
- Update to latest components — brings in the current version of the shared interface pieces.
- Download source — the whole repository as a zip. Workspace owners only.
- Delete application — permanent, with its data.
On a phone#
There is no room for a split, so the conversation and the application are a choice rather than a layout: one control in the header switches between Chat and App, and the tab strip scrolls.
Nothing is desktop-only. You can put a version live, connect a domain and test an integration from a phone — which is where you are when a customer tells you something is wrong.