Change your app by chatting

Every change to your app starts with a message in the chat. Crisp remembers the whole conversation and the features you asked for before, so you can refer to earlier requests.

Send a change#

1. 1 Click the box at the bottom of the chat, which says Ask for a change…, or press Ctrl and K (⌘ and K on a Mac).
2. 2 Describe the change. Press Shift and Enter for a new line.
3. 3 Press Enter, or the round send button.
4. 4 Your message shows at once, and a line under it says what Crisp is doing, such as Reading your request. Watch the steps in the chat. The preview reloads when files change.
5. 5 Read the final reply. It says what changed and what to try first.

A message can be up to 8,000 characters long. What you type is kept in this browser until you send it, so a reload or a closed tab does not lose it. In an empty box, press the up arrow to bring back the last message you sent.

If a message does not send, it stays in the chat marked Not sent, and its text is back in the box. Press Try again to send it again.

Mention a page or a file#

Type @ to pick a page or a file of your app, such as the /sessions/new page. Type / at the start of the box to switch between Build, Plan and Ask, undo the last change, publish, or open the data.

Add files and screenshots#

Show Crisp what you mean. Add a sketch, a screenshot of a problem, a logo, a PDF or a text file such as a CSV with your data. Crisp reads the files before it starts.

• Press the paperclip button, paste a file into the message box, or drop files anywhere on the chat.
• Press the camera button to attach a screenshot of the preview. Your browser asks which tab to share: choose this one. This button appears on computers with a mouse.
• You can attach up to 5 files to one message, each up to 10 MB. Crisp accepts images (PNG, JPG, WebP and GIF), PDF files and text files.
• Press the cross on a file to remove it before you send.

Attached files are for Crisp to look at. They do not become part of your app. To put an image in your app, say so: "Use the attached logo in the header."

Speak your message#

Press the microphone button, next to the send arrow, and say what you want, in any language. Sound waves show while Crisp listens. Press the tick when you have finished, or the cross to start over. A moment later your words appear in the box, written in the language you spoke. Read them, fix anything that was misheard, and send. Nothing is sent until you press Enter.

• Speak the way you would explain it to a colleague. Mixing languages is fine, and names of products, files and code are written in Latin letters.
• One message can be up to three minutes long. The recording stops by itself at the limit.
• The first time, allow the microphone for this site. Without the mouse, press Alt and V to start and again to finish, and Esc to cancel.
• Crisp works out the language by itself. If it gets yours wrong, for example Gujarati written as Hindi or Urdu written in Hindi letters, press the globe next to the microphone and choose your language once. The choice is kept in this browser.
• The same button is on your dashboard, so you can speak your first prompt too.

Crisp understands what you say in your language, and answers in it. Your app itself is built the way you ask: say which language its pages should be in.

Use a suggested next step#

After a build, up to three suggested next steps appear above the message box, chosen for your app, such as Add sign-in or Make it work well on phones. Click one to send it as your next message.

Stop a build#

While Crisp works, a Stop button appears next to the send button. Press it, or press Esc in an empty message box, to stop the build. Crisp stops everything it started for that request. Changes it already made to files stay in place, so look at the preview before you continue.

While a build runs#

One build runs at a time in each project, but you can keep writing:

• Press Enter to add your message to the queue. It runs when the current build finishes.
• Press Ctrl and Enter (⌘ and Enter on a Mac) to stop the current build and send your message now. The work done so far is kept. Use it when you see Crisp going in the wrong direction.

Waiting messages appear above the message box. You can Edit or Remove each one, or press Run this next to move it to the front. Up to 20 messages can wait. On a phone the list folds to one line; tap it to open it.

You can also write while a new project is still being set up. Your message waits and runs after the first version is ready.

Copy, edit or take back a message#

Point at a message you sent (on a phone, tap it) to see its buttons:

• Copy copies the text.
• Edit and resend puts the text back in the box. When you send it, Crisp first undoes that message and everything after it, then sends the new text. For an older message, Crisp first asks whether your data should stay as it is now or come back too.
• Go back to before this returns your app to how it was before that message.

Under each reply, the ... button has Copy reply. Ctrl, Shift and C (⌘, Shift and C on a Mac) copies the last reply.

See what Crisp did#

Everything Crisp does for one request is in one progress card, one line per step in plain words, such as Built the home page or Updated the database. Under a step that changed a file you see the file name: click it to open the file in the Code tab. Click a step to open it:

• For a changed file, you see the lines that were removed and added.
• For a new file, you see its content.
• For a command, you see the command and what it printed.
• For a step that failed, you see what went wrong.

When the request is done, the card folds to one line, such as Built in 4 steps · 12 actions. Click it to see the steps again.

If you scroll up, or select text in the chat, the chat stops moving so you can read. A Latest button, with the number of new steps, takes you back to the newest message. A long conversation shows its newest 30 messages and their replies; press Show earlier messages to see the rest.

Go back#

If a change is not what you wanted, press Undo this change under the newest reply, or Restore under an earlier one. See Undo a change and restore a version.

Plan or ask first#

For a big change, switch the message box to Plan to review a plan first, or to Ask to ask a question without changing anything. See Plan first, or ask a question.

Change the code yourself#

For a small change, such as a word or a colour, you can also edit the code directly in the Code tab. See Edit the code yourself.