A new Surfaces API

A few weeks ago we launched Surfaces: turning any codebase into a design environment and rendering every surface with perfect fidelity, with zero setup.

As it turns out, “any codebase,” “perfect fidelity,” and “zero setup” are three phrases that, when written in the same sentence, brings about a surprising amount of engineering complexity.

Since launch, we've learned a lot. Most of the learnings came from constantly being woken by a late night call because a surface took our customer hostage.

After numerous ahhhs, hmms, "SHIT! why is it not working", "wow this is actually kinda working" and "are we getting sushi again for lunch?", we have reworked how Surfaces work.

This has many benefits. Our agent works far better with them, and the whole experience is more reliable. Finally it makes us feel like competent engineers (I hope I don't have to take this back in the next edition of brushstrokes).

This new api also sets the stage for new features such as adding and removing surfaces, automatically keeping them in sync with prod etc and other thinigs that will sound obvious once we build them but do not right now.

We're slow-rolling the new API out to everyone in the next coming days.

Fast mode

Changing a copy shouldn't feel like you are stuck on that planet (the one where they mistook waves for mountains) in Interstellar.

Here's a real video of one of our users interacting with the dessn agent.

We fixed it with Fast mode. We now detect if the request can be done by a faster model and use that model.

A side by side comparison.

Now you can spend more time on things that matter, for eg, spending time with your daughter before she becomes older than you and starts sending emotionally devastating video messages.

Before and after fast mode

Component inspector

Select a component and you can see some details of the component.

For now it shows you the code behind the component, plus a breadcrumb so you can walk up the tree and select a parent higher up. This is especially useful because, like in real life, sometimes you find that an issue you are trying to fix is caused by a parent.

We have big ambitions for the inspector (One day it will be promoted to chief inspector). Expect a lot more features to land here in the future.

What's next

We're focused on two things.

Self-serve surfaces. Add, delete, and update surfaces yourself through our surface agent, for perfect control over what you design on.

Always in sync with prod. Autocompiling keeps your project up to date with production automatically, so you never design against a stale version.