Build in Playground

Playground is a coding agent inside Console for a hosted app. Describe a change in plain words, such as "add a page that lists our rewards", and the agent edits your project. You watch the result in a live preview next to the chat, and every turn is saved as a checkpoint you can go back to.

• Members don't see your work yet. Changes reach members only after you stage them and a promotion takes that build live.
• No setup on your computer. The agent works in a sandbox with a copy of your project's repository and runs the app's development preview for you.
• Where to find it. Open Developers → Build with the Test environment selected. You need publish permission in Test.

Chat with the agent

Open Developers → Build in Test to chat with the hosted agent beside your app's preview. Send a description of the change. Your message appears immediately, and the conversation follows the response as it grows. Scroll up to read earlier work; choose Scroll to end to follow again.

Consecutive tool calls and reasoning appear in a collapsed summary, such as Ran 3 commands and read 2 files. Progress messages separate the groups. Expand a summary to see individual steps, then expand a tool call for its command, output, or file diff. Running work and failed calls are marked in the summary.

When a turn finishes, the chat keeps your message, the final answer, and the checkpoint's Stage or Restore control visible. Expand Worked for… to read intermediate messages and work summaries.

Answer questions and permission requests

Questions appear above the message box. Select the requested options or enter your own answer, then choose Next for the following question or Submit after the last one. Skip dismisses the request and lets the agent continue without an answer.

Permission requests show the action and affected resources. Choose Allow once, Always allow when offered, or Reject. Requests from a subagent appear here too.

Beside the model picker, the message box shows the AI credit the last turn used and the AI balance left for this project, for example $0.12 last turn · $8.40 left. AI usage draws credit at Domino's rates.

Use Stop to interrupt the current turn. If sending fails, the message returns to the composer so you can retry. Questions and permissions are loaded again when you reopen the playground.

Work in the side panes

Next to Chat, Playground has six panes:

Playground starts the development server for you. Its agent can inspect the server's status and logs, recover a stopped server, or restart it after configuration or dependency changes. These controls use the same server shown in Preview. Source edits update through the running server. If the agent reports that its preview controls are unavailable, reload Playground to boot the sandbox again.

See the campaign as a map

Map draws what the project runs in Test, read from its latest published deployment rather than from the source files. Playground publishes the project's quests to Test each time the agent's changes build, and the map follows within about ten seconds while the pane is open.

Each arrow says what crosses it: which records start a quest and who it pays, what a completion takes from a cap, and the points a quest, prize or referral pays. A dashed arrow is a prerequisite, such as another quest or a minimum balance. Archived quests, leaderboards and referral programs are left out. Notices about the deployment, such as a missing integration, appear above the map.

When the latest change doesn't build, Map shows the error instead of a map that no longer matches the project. Ask the agent to fix it; the map returns once the quests build and publish again. The map is read-only: change the campaign by asking the agent.

Keep threads apart

Playground keeps each conversation as a thread. Use the thread menu above the chat to start a New thread, switch between threads, rename one, or archive one you no longer need; archived threads stay under Archived and can be moved back.

• One copy of the project. Your threads share it, so they see each other's changes.
• One thread works at a time. Others wait their turn; see queue follow-up messages.
• Restore rewinds everything after it. Restoring a checkpoint rewinds that thread's conversation and the project's files, including changes other threads made after it.
• Nothing is lost when the sandbox sleeps. Threads are saved after every turn and survive the sandbox sleeping or being replaced.

When you step away

After five minutes without interaction, an idle Playground tab pauses its live connections and preview so the hosted sandbox can sleep. Running agent turns and checkpoint saves finish first. Interacting with the preview counts as activity.

Return to the tab or choose Resume playground to reconnect. Your chat and unsent prompt remain.

The hosted sandbox can sleep after its additional 15-minute inactivity period. Local Docker containers continue until you stop the local stack.

Save to main and stage

Playground works on its own branch of your repository, so its changes stay out of main until you save them. Sync with main above the chat asks the agent to move work between the two:

Restore on a checkpoint rewinds that thread's conversation and the project's files to it.

Continue in your own agent

Open in your agent shows the commands that hand the project to Codex or Claude Code on your computer. Your agent checks out the repository; when it saves to main, bring that work back into Playground with Get latest from main.

Once the project has published quests or staging builds, the instructions pick up that work. The agent reads the project and its saved brief, summarizes what exists, and asks what to change, without running brand or campaign discovery again.

Queue follow-up messages

While the agent works, press Enter or choose Queue to hold your next message. Queued messages appear above the message box and go out one at a time as each turn finishes. Remove a queued message if it no longer applies. A selected element or captured logs are attached when you queue the message.

Only one thread runs at a time. While another thread works, the message box offers Queue instead of sending, and the message goes out once that thread's turn ends.

Choosing Stop, restoring a checkpoint, or a failed send pauses the queue, because the queued messages may no longer apply. Choose Send next to resume.

Send a request from another page

Some Console pages offer Send to Build beside Copy prompt: the example requests on an empty Quests, Rewards, Leaderboards, Referrals or Trackers page, and the X search preview. It needs permission to build the project.

1. Choose Send to Build. Developers → Build opens in Test on a new thread, with the request in the message box under Prepared from ….
2. Review or edit the request. Nothing is sent until you send it, or queue it while another thread works.
3. Send it. The thread is named after the request. Choose Discard instead to empty the message box.

A request that hasn't been sent is dropped when you reload the page; send it again from the page that wrote it. A project whose code Domino doesn't host has no playground, so Build shows the request with Copy request to paste into your own agent.

Attach files

Attach files with the paperclip, by pasting a screenshot, or by dropping files on the message box. A message can carry up to five files of up to 5 MB each, and can contain only attachments. Remove a file from the message box before sending if you change your mind.

The agent receives the path of each file in its sandbox, so it can use the file directly, for example by copying a logo into your app.

Attachments are kept outside your repository and are not saved in checkpoints unless the agent copies them into the project. If an upload fails, nothing is sent and your message keeps its files. Queued messages keep their attachments.

Point to a change in the preview

Choose Select, then click an element in the preview. The element appears above your message box. Describe the change and send your message; the agent receives its selector, visible text, and a compact markup summary. The selected click does not open links or submit forms. Press Escape to cancel selection, or remove the attachment before sending. Input values are excluded.

On narrow screens, Forward is hidden. Changing the device width keeps the app running. A fixed viewport wider than the pane scrolls horizontally. These controls change viewport width, not the browser's operating system or touch behavior.

Element selection and logs need a connected development preview. If they are unavailable, wait for development to start and choose Reload preview. Staged previews support resizing but do not capture elements or logs.

Captured logs stay in this browser until you attach and send them. Reloading the preview or navigating to another document clears them. They do not include server logs or the contents of nested frames.

Upgrade an older project

The preview needs Domino CLI 1.0.0 or newer. Projects created from earlier starters build quests the API no longer accepts. Instead of starting the preview, Playground shows Upgrade with AI. The agent upgrades @domino-sdk/relay and @domino-sdk/relay-cli and applies the required migrations. When it finishes, choose Start the preview. Your dependencies change only when you choose the upgrade. See When Vite is ready but the preview does not start for other startup failures.

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