Tester guide

Smithable builds business apps (a CRM, bookings, invoicing, and similar) from a short description of what they do, and keeps them working as you change them. The code is ordinary TypeScript that you own. This page covers what to try in the beta, and what does not work yet.

1. Start an app

On Your apps, either describe the app in a sentence or two, or pick a starter (CRM, Booking, Invoicing, Marketplace, Status page, A collection, An API). With a description, an AI model may first ask up to three questions (answer or skip them), then adapts the starter that fits; that takes about a minute. The app then opens in Studio.

2. Look around: Builder

Studio opens in Builder, with three columns:

• Your app: what the app does, in plain sentences (its records and their fields, pages, and who may do what). Each part has Edit: change the words and press Suggest. Adding or removing a line in a list of fields (for example “- a website (a web address)”) is read without AI; other rewording goes to the AI. Either way you see the change before it happens.
• The preview: the running app. Use the sign-in buttons in it to try the app as different roles (for example admin or member).
• The changes: every change so far, in the same words, with Undo (or Ctrl+Z outside a text field).

3. Change it

Open the Change tab:

• Describe: write what you want in your own words, for example “customers should have a mobile number” or “only admins may delete orders”, and press Suggest. You see the proposed change in plain language, and nothing happens until you press Apply. Edit in Manual opens a proposed step in its form, to adjust it first.
• Manual: forms for common changes: fields, pages, search, access, menu order, icons, colours of a choice, a dashboard tile, and the look and feel.

In the preview, press Select, then click a field or a column to change it on the right, drag a column header to reorder the columns, or click a text (a page title, a label, a landing page's texts) to retype it. Enter saves.

Landing pages (Booking and Invoicing have one) show a picture in their first section; its description for screen readers is in the app's texts.

Every change can be undone. Changes that need no AI are free; AI changes come out of a small monthly allowance, shown on Your apps.

4. Look under the hood: Studio

Switch to Studio at the top to see the app the way a developer does: its concepts with their rules and files, smithable.yml (the description the app is built from, checked as you type), the last change as a diff, the logs, and a way to give a page its own hand-written component. Nothing here is needed to use Smithable, but you can try it.

5. Publish and hand over

On the app's page (click its name on Your apps):

• Publish live checks the app (type check and tests), builds it and puts it online, with its data backed up. Publish to staging makes a separate copy to check first.
• Once live, it can have your own domain.
• Connect an AI agent: Claude Code, Cursor and other MCP clients can change the app, and the changes show up in Studio.
• Hand it over: download everything in one file (the code with its history, the data and uploads), to keep, to give a developer or to leave with, or move it to someone else's account.

Not there yet

• Images and media, and many kinds of page sections: company websites are next.
• Payments, integrations with other systems, and automatic flows (“when an order is placed, email the customer”).
• Rules across fields, such as an end date after its start date, need hand-written code for now.
• An app you have not opened for a while takes a few seconds to wake up.

Feedback

Everything helps: what confused you, what you expected to find, what broke, and what you would use it for. Send it to the person who invited you, ideally with the app's name and what you did just before.