Chimp
Starting a website or app
Start with a sentence. Chimp's AI product manager asks a few questions, each with a suggested answer, and then writes the specification for you to approve.
Describe it
- In Chimp, choose New website or app.
- Describe it in a sentence or two, for example "A website for my dog-walking business where people can see our walks and book one." The box has a microphone if you would rather say it.
- Choose a starting point:
| Website | Pages people read, with forms. Like a business site. |
|---|---|
| Web app | People sign in and get things done. |
| Online store | Products, a cart and checkout. It takes payments, so it is offered only where payments are available on the account; otherwise it is shown greyed out, with the reason. Chimp connects it to the project's store: it sells the store's products at the store's prices, and buyers pay on the store's own checkout page. It also has a My account page where your customers sign in. See Build. |
| Client portal | Your customers see their own bookings, files and invoices. Where Mercato is available, Chimp connects it like an online store, without taking payments: its customers sign in to the store's Customer portal. |
| Prototype (design only) | Under More starting options. It stops after Design: share it for comments, and continue to build later. |
| ⬆ Upload Prototype | Also under More starting options (and at the top of Chimp's list): upload a prototype you already have, as an .html file or a .zip with its images. It joins as a Prototype (design only) at Design, with no interview. Upload a prototype to Chimp |
- Optional: + Add from Data Management lets the AI read up to three of the project's pages, and + Skills lets you tick the project's Skills it should follow. Both open What Chimp reads, which also shows what it always reads. See below.
- Optional: ⤓ Import my existing website, then type Your website's address. Chimp reads your current site: its home page and up to seven more pages it links to on the same site. Their words are saved in Data Management (Chimp / your app's name / Imported) and count as facts you gave, so prices and details already on your site are used. If the site cannot be read, Chimp carries on from your description.
- Optional: a Name. Leave it empty and Chimp names it for you.
- Press Continue.
What Chimp reads
Chimp uses what your project already knows. What Chimp reads, on this screen and later in the app's Settings, lists all of it:
| Brand Kit | The colours and fonts, always. If the Brand Kit has a logo, the design shows it in the site's header and the build puts it in the header and uses it as the icon on the browser tab. The logo is described by your business name: the project's name, or for an online store, the store's name in Mercato. Only a PNG, JPEG, WebP or GIF of at most 256 KB is used on a site; otherwise What Chimp reads says why (for example, that the logo is an SVG) and the header shows the name, in the design and the build alike. With no logo, the header shows the name. |
|---|---|
| Context | The project's Context, always: your notes and the files the AI reads (What the AI reads for a project). The interview, the spec and the design use them. A long Context does not all fit in one request: Chimp reads the beginning of long notes and of each long file, and says what it left out, here and in Settings. A dataset gives its columns and first 10 rows. If the Context cannot be read at that moment, Chimp works without it and says so in History. |
| Skills | None unless you tick them, up to five. A ticked skill's instructions guide how Chimp writes the spec, the design and the code: a writing style or a tone of voice, for example. A skill never overrides the site's own rules: the site never loads a script, stylesheet or frame from another address, whatever a skill says. Change them later in the app's Settings. |
| Pages from Data Management | Up to three pages you choose with + Add from Data Management. |
| Your website | Its pages, if you import it. |
Chimp does not read the pages it writes itself (the spec, the Documentation and the imported pages in its Chimp folder) as Context, and nothing else in the project is sent.
The interview
The interview starts by itself. The AI product manager asks five to seven questions, chosen for your starting point: who it is for, what people must be able to do, whether they sign in, what you offer, what should happen with a form, how you will know it works, and whether visitors should be able to chat with you.
- Each question has a suggested answer. ✓ Accept takes it in one click; Change it lets you write your own.
- Chimp never makes up facts about your business. Prices, areas, hours and other facts come only from what you wrote, the project's Context, the pages you chose and your imported site. When it does not know one, the question is marked Please check and you type the answer.
- Should visitors be able to chat with you? offers your Tellagent chatbots. Pick one, or No chat for now. Chimp adds the chatbot to every page when the app is built, and it answers on the app's own address (name.veragen.app) and in its previews. You do not need to add those addresses to the chatbot's websites in Tellagent. To make a chatbot, publish a chat workflow in Tellagent.
- Your spec so far, on the right, fills in as you answer.
When every question is answered, press Write the spec. See The spec.