What’s new in Playcode

Sharing an editable link from a Pro workspace now works the way it should: any number of collaborators can join at the same time, and they do not need a Playcode account - opening the link is enough.

Previously, collaborators who were not signed in could be turned away with a "collaboration limit reached" message even when the project owner was on Pro. That check now runs on our servers against the project's actual plan, so it can no longer misfire.

Free projects keep the existing limit of 2 people at once, and the project owner now sees a notice when someone was turned away - the AI agent working in your project no longer counts toward that limit.

The Quality build tier now runs on Claude Opus 5 by default - Anthropic's newest Opus, with noticeably sharper reasoning on multi-step build and edit work. New chats on Quality pick it up automatically; no setting to change.

Opus 5 thinks before it answers, so expect it to spend a little longer - and a few more credits - on hard tasks than the model it replaces. Claude Opus 4.8 is still one click away if you want the leaner option for everyday pages.

Switch any time in the Choose build quality dialog, or set your account-wide default in Settings -> AI defaults.

When you switch your project's shared link from "can edit" to view-only, everyone who already has the project open now loses edit access within a second - their editor switches to a read-only state with a clear notice. Turning editing back on unlocks connected visitors just as instantly.

Previously the toggle only applied to people who opened the link *after* the change: visitors who were already connected could keep typing until they reloaded the page, which made the setting look broken.

Opening a shared project link without signing in now gives you a way to browse the whole project, not just the files the owner happened to leave open.

The project menu has a new Files entry under View. It opens the file tree in a panel on the left - click any file to open it, exactly like the project's members do. Close the panel with the x in its corner and reopen it from the menu any time.

On read-only links the tree is view-only: you can open files, split the editor, and copy paths, but options that would change the project - creating, renaming, moving, or deleting files - are not shown. Links that allow editing keep the full set.

Kimi K3, Moonshot's flagship model, is now available in the Choose build quality dialog. It brings a 1M-token context window, always-on reasoning, and vision - so it can hold a very large project in context, think through multi-step changes, and read the screenshots or mockups you attach.

Pick it per chat like any other model, or set it as your account-wide default in Settings -> AI defaults. It is a strong fit for large builds where the whole codebase matters.

The Quality build tier now runs on Claude Opus 4.8 by default - our strongest all-round model for building and editing apps. New chats on Quality pick it up automatically; no setting to change.

Prefer a different model? Every option is still one click away in the Choose build quality dialog, and your account-wide default lives in Settings -> AI defaults.

The model you pick in the Choose build quality dialog now applies to that chat only. Open another chat, pick a different model, and run them side by side - one choice no longer follows you across every conversation.

Your account-wide defaults still live in Settings -> AI defaults, and the Set as my default row in the dialog now promotes your current models too, along with mode, effort, and context.

Published browser projects are now served from yourproject.playcode.site (previously on playcode.io). The new address shows up in the editor and dashboard, ready to copy and share.

If you shared an older playcode.io project link, visitors now see a short notice pointing them to the new .site address - reshare the new link wherever you posted the old one. Custom domains you've connected are unaffected and keep working as-is.

Converting a browser project to a Cloud full-stack app no longer fails when the project carries a large media library.

Projects with many hundreds of images could get stuck at the import step with an unhelpful error, and retrying or restarting the project computer never helped. The importer now transfers big asset sets reliably, and if anything does go wrong during a conversion, the error now names the actual cause instead of a generic failure - so the AI can fix it or route it to us with real detail.

Your signed-in home is rebuilt. Instead of a grid of files with a second, weaker prompt box, Home is now the place you build: a short greeting and the exact same composer you use inside the editor. From the very first screen you can attach files, use your voice, and pick your model and effort - no more stripped-down starter prompt.

• One composer everywhere. The box on Home and the box in the editor are the same tool. Whatever you can do in a chat, you can do the moment you arrive.
• Always know where your message goes. A small target chip on the composer shows whether your prompt will start a new project or continue an existing one. If you have a single project, it points there by default; one tap switches it - so a quick change request never spawns an empty project by accident.
• A project sidebar on every screen. Your projects, their chats, and folders now live in one collapsible sidebar. Open any project or jump straight to a past chat in a single click, drag a project into a folder, and reorder folders to taste. It stays put as you move between Home and the editor, so you never lose your place.
• A template gallery when you want it. "Or start from a template" opens a browsable gallery of ready-made site templates, with coding templates - React, Vue, plain JavaScript, and more - one click away. It is opt-in and never gets in the way of just describing what you want.
• A dedicated Archive. Archived projects have their own page with bulk restore, keeping your active project list clean.
• An editor that earns its chrome. A brand-new project opens clean and quiet. Share, Publish, and other controls appear as your project becomes real - once you have actually built something worth sharing - so the toolbar teaches you the workflow instead of overwhelming you on day one.

Old links to your dashboard bring you straight to the new Home, so nothing you had bookmarked breaks.

Cloud publishing got a stronger guarantee: Publish deploys the exact code that is in your workspace at the moment you press the button - every time, no matter what the AI has been doing with Git behind the scenes.

Previously, if the AI organized its work into a Git branch, a publish could quietly ship an older version of your app, or fail repeatedly with a cryptic Git error that retrying never fixed. That whole class of problems is gone:

• What you see is what ships. Publish captures your current workspace state as a single immutable version - unsaved edits included - and deploys exactly that. Branches, background commits, and Git bookkeeping can no longer change what goes live.
• Every publish shows its source. The publish dialog and history now identify each attempt by its branch and version - so "what exactly is live right now?" always has a clear answer, for you and for the AI.
• Honest errors instead of retry loops. In the rare case your workspace is genuinely out of sync with the published history, Publish stops before touching production and explains what happened in plain words - your live site stays untouched, and the AI can see the same explanation and fix the mismatch for you.

On desktop, the editor no longer carries a top navigation bar. The space it used to take now belongs to your work.

• The project menu moved into the panel row. Rename, settings, and everything you used to reach for up top now sit right next to your tabs, where the rest of your project controls live.
• Publish rides the preview toolbar. The Publish button is now on the preview, exactly where you are already looking when you are ready to ship.
• A taller canvas and a calmer screen. Fewer bars competing for attention means more room for your code and your live preview, and the controls you need are next to the work instead of parked at the top.

Nothing was taken away - every action still has a home, just a better one. On phones and tablets the familiar top bar stays, so smaller screens are unchanged.

The template gallery is now fully stocked. Open "Start from a template" and you land in a browsable library of ready-made starting points - more than 50 of them - so you rarely have to begin from a blank screen.

• Site templates for landing pages, portfolios, and other static sites you can publish as-is and then reshape by describing the changes you want.
• Coding starters for full-stack apps - React, Vue, plain JavaScript, and more - including clean Empty starters for when you want the framework without any demo content.
• Ready in every language. The whole gallery is translated, so template names and descriptions read naturally across all of Playcode's supported languages.

Pick one and you are in the editor with a working project in a single click.

The top of the sidebar now holds a workspace switcher. Your personal space and any team workspaces you belong to are one click apart, and the switcher always shows which one you are working in.

Your account controls moved in behind it - profile, plan, and workspace settings now live under the switcher instead of being scattered around the screen. One tidy corner tells you who you are and where you are building, and gets you between workspaces without hunting for a menu.

On desktop, each project in the sidebar now shows a thumbnail - a screenshot of the project itself - so you recognize the one you want by sight instead of reading down a list of names.

Hover a project and a larger preview pops up, giving you a fuller look before you open it. Finding the right project across a long list is now a glance, not a hunt.

The project sidebar is now resizable. Drag its edge to make it as wide or as narrow as you like, from a slim strip to a roomy panel. Double-click the edge to snap back to the default width.

Playcode remembers the width you chose and brings it back every time you return, on every screen.

Settings is now one word. Everything that used to hide in the Preferences and Appearance menus - theme, language, editor options, AI defaults - lives in a single Settings modal you can open from anywhere.

The modal is grouped by scope, so it is always clear who a setting affects:

• Project - name, archive, publish address and custom domains, plus how the project runs: watermark, live reload, SPA mode, live view delay, loop protection, and production build options. This group appears when you open Settings from inside a project.
• You - profile, appearance, editor preferences, and your AI defaults (model tier, effort, context, voice input). These follow you across all workspaces.
• Workspace - general settings, people and teams, billing and plans, usage, and the affiliate program.

Two behaviors worth knowing:

• A chat keeps whatever quality settings you give it; a new chat starts from your defaults in Settings.
• To make the current chat's setup your default, use Set as my default right in the build-quality dialog - one tap, no extra dialog.

The project menu now holds only actions. Every knob has a home in Settings.

Playcode now asks for confirmation before you increase context above Medium, switch to Ultra, or move from a stronger model to Economy.

Each dialog explains the practical trade-off without discouraging the choice. Economy highlights lower credit use and explains what to do if a complex task starts repeating; larger context and Ultra explain their higher credit use. Re-selecting the current mode, lowering context, or leaving Ultra remains immediate.

Pro mode now starts with GPT-5.6 Sol, OpenAI's flagship model for complex builds, detailed design work, and difficult debugging.

Your existing model choice is preserved if you selected one yourself. You can switch the Pro model at any time from the build-quality picker or Preferences > AI Model > Quality Model.

Cloud projects now have a File Explorer. Open the Files tab in the editor's left panel to browse everything the AI built for you - and edit any file yourself.

• Browse your whole project. Folders load as you expand them, so even huge projects open instantly.
• Edit with a real code editor. Click a file to open it in a tab with syntax highlighting. Changes save automatically to your app.
• Stays in sync with the AI. When the AI finishes making changes, the file tree and your open files refresh on their own.
• Full file management. Create, rename, delete, and download files and folders right from the tree - folders arrive as a single archive.
• Upload from your computer. Drop files or whole folders onto the tree (structure preserved), or use the upload button.
• Markdown preview. Open any .md file and flip between source and a rendered preview.
• Drag to move. Reorganize your project by dragging files and folders in the tree.

Your files live on your app's own server, so what you see in the explorer is exactly what your app runs. Big or binary files (images, archives) show a summary card with a download button instead of opening as text.

Building a site is half the job - people need to find it. Your Playcode AI can now research real search data while it works on your project:

• Keyword research. Ask "what keywords should my site target?" and get real Google search volumes, difficulty scores, and search intent - not guesses. It can also pull the full keyword list any competitor ranks for.
• Backlink intelligence. See who links to any site: total authority, top referring domains, and the exact linking pages. Great for finding sites that link to your competitors but not to you yet.
• Live Google results. Check who actually ranks for a search today - and whether your site shows up.

Just ask in chat: "find low-competition keywords for my bakery site", "who links to my competitor?", or "where do I rank for handmade candles?". The AI pulls the data, reads it, and turns it into a concrete plan - new pages, better titles, link targets.

Available on paid plans. Each lookup uses a small amount of credits (about the same as generating an image), and repeated identical lookups within a day are free.

Your Playcode AI can now hand heavy work to background agents - and stay available while they run.

• It keeps talking while they work. Ask for research, an audit, or a build slice "in the background" and the AI starts a task, tells you the id, and keeps the conversation going. When the task finishes, the result lands right back in your chat.
• A tasks panel in the editor. See every background task with a live status - queued, running, finished - how long it's been going, and a stop button while it's alive.
• Every task is a real chat. Open any task to watch the agent work message by message, exactly like your main chat. Type into it to steer a running agent mid-flight, or message a finished one to continue where it left off.
• Built-in quality loop. For bigger builds the AI can run build -> audit -> fix cycles: a coder agent implements, an auditor agent reviews against your requirements and returns a concrete verdict, and fixes get their own task - before the result comes back to you.

Long tasks no longer look like a hang: if an agent hits a limit, you get the partial result and can send it a follow-up to continue. Tasks even survive our own deploys - they resume from their chat history instead of failing.

Background agents got a big round of polish the same day they shipped:

• Agents now build in parallel. The AI can run several build agents at once - each with its own slice of the work - instead of queueing them one after another. Big builds finish sooner.
• You can see what each task runs on. Every task now shows its agent type and model tier right in the tasks panel, and read-only helpers (research, code exploration) always use the economy model. A task never uses a more expensive tier than your chat is set to - upgrading is always your call, never the AI's.
• Research you can trust. A research agent must fetch real web sources now; if it ever answers without them, the result is clearly flagged so you know it came from memory, not the web.
• Smoother task navigation. The tasks panel has a proper header and close button, and the back button in a task returns you to wherever you came from - the chat or the list. Failed and stopped tasks say what actually happened instead of a generic line.
• Calmer credit warnings. Running low shows a quiet amber note above the chat box (dismissible), with a heads-up at 50% and 15% remaining - including on the Free plan, which previously got no warning at all. Out of credits is now a one-click "Top up" (or "Upgrade" on Free), never a red alarm.
• Clearer controls. Stopping a task is a stop square now (the old ✕ looked like "close"), task cards keep their title readable on narrow screens, your chat list shows a small spinner on any chat the AI is still working in, and undo works on file changes inside a task's transcript too.

The chat composer got a full redesign:

• One quiet frame. Softer corners, a lower profile, and every control in calm ink - the send button is the only thing that lights up.
• Notices slide out from behind. Credit warnings no longer stack a banner on top of the chat box; they dock behind it as a slim strip, so the composer always stays in front.
• Compact attachments. Files and images you attach are now small chips inside the frame instead of large preview cards.
• Little touches. A frosted-glass scroll-to-bottom button, a clearer sidebar icon, and a bit more breathing room in the header - especially on phones.

Every chat now carries its own receipt. Open the chat picker in the editor (click the chat name above the conversation) and the bottom of the menu shows two quiet numbers for the current chat:

• Spent in this chat - the total AI credits this conversation has used so far.
• Context - how much of the model's working memory the chat is filling.

When a chat runs long, the context number turns amber with a tip: long chats reply slower and cost more, so starting a new chat for the next task keeps you fast and cheap.

Nothing ticks while the AI works - the receipt only appears when you ask for it.

You can now pick exactly how Playcode builds - and swap the model behind each tier - right from the Choose build quality menu next to the composer.

Three tiers, your call.

• Economy - fast and low-cost, great for simple edits, fixes, and basic pages.
• Pro - the default: detailed design, the cleanest results, and the fewest errors.
• Ultra - new. Our most capable model, for the hardest, highest-stakes builds.

Pick the model per tier. Each tier has a small model chip - tap it to choose from a curated shortlist, with a cost signal so the trade-off is clear. Set your preferred Pro model once and it sticks.

Tune the context, too. A new Context dial controls how much of the conversation the agent keeps before it summarizes - turn it up for long files and deep sessions, or down to keep runs lean.

Builds on GPT-5.6 Sol (available in the Pro tier) now reuse cached context between steps, so multi-step agent runs are noticeably faster and spend fewer credits.

Why it matters. A long agent turn re-sends a lot of the same context on every step. Sol now caches that context, so the repeated parts are much cheaper - more of your credits go toward new work instead of re-processing what the agent already read.

Your teammates' names and emails now appear instantly in the People view and the share dialog - and keep working even when your connection drops.

No more waiting or blanks. Names and avatars for everyone you share a workspace or project with are kept in sync locally, so the roster renders immediately instead of blanking while it fetches. Open the People page or a share dialog offline and you still see who's who.

Workspaces now have teams - named groups of people you can share with in one step.

Create a team from Settings -> People -> Teams and add workspace members to it. Then, in the Share popup, grant access to the team the same way you would to a person: everyone in the team gets that access at once.

Teams stay live as your group changes. Add someone to a team and they immediately get everything the team has been given; remove them and that access goes away just as fast. No more re-sharing a dozen projects when a new person joins.

The Share popup shows exactly where access comes from: grants received through a team are labeled "via team", and the team's access level is edited in one place - on the team grant itself. A direct personal share and a team share can coexist; the more permissive one wins.

A workspace is no longer tied to the one person who clicked "Create".

Any number of admins. Promote as many teammates to admin as you need - every admin can manage members, sharing, settings, and billing with equal rights. There is no single "super owner" anymore; the person who created the workspace is simply its first admin.

Ownership is transferable. Handing a workspace over is now just a role change: make the new person an admin, and they can take it from there - including if the original creator later leaves the company. Playcode always keeps at least one admin in place, so a workspace can never lock itself out.

Nothing changes for your personal workspace - it stays yours.