PIES Studio 1.7 · Documentation
Ten minutes, one working application, no prior knowledge. The user manual is the reference; this is the shortest path through it.
You need a PIES Studio to work in, and there are two ways to get one.
Download the local IDE from pies.io/download — macOS, Windows or Linux. It runs entirely on your machine, needs no server and no account, and everything in this guide works in it. That is the fastest start.
Or sign in to a server your organisation runs. If nobody has set one up yet, see the installation guide.
The editor is the same either way; see the manual, chapter 2 for what a connection adds.
Sign in. On the workspace, choose New application, give it a name, and pick Web. You land in the editor with an empty application: no screens, no tables, nothing to break.
Open the PIES AI panel and describe the application in plain language. Be specific about the things it manages and what you want to do with them:
Create a client tracker. Clients have a name, company, email, status and the date we last spoke. I want a list screen I can filter by status, and a form to add and edit a client.
PIES AI replies with a plan before it builds anything. Read it. If the plan is wrong, say so in the same conversation and it will revise — correcting a plan costs seconds, correcting a built application costs minutes.
When the plan is right, press Continue.
The panel shows each step as it happens: tables created, screens laid out, events and functions written. When it finishes you get a build receipt — the list of exactly what changed. That receipt is your evidence; the prose summary above it is a description, the receipt is the record.
Open the explorer on the left and you will see the same things: your tables under the data model, your screens under Screens.
Open a screen. The canvas shows the real layout — widgets bound to real columns, not a mockup. Click a widget and the right-hand panel shows what it is bound to.
This is the moment to change anything you do not like. You can do it by hand on the canvas, or ask PIES AI in the same conversation ("make the status a dropdown, not a text field"). Both edit the same application.
Press Build. PIES Studio generates a complete application — front end, back end, database schema — and compiles it.
Read the PROBLEMS panel before you look at the preview. A clean build means what you see next is real. If there are problems, the error reference says which ones you can fix and which are ours.
Then press Run to open the preview. This is not a mockup: it is your application, deployed and running, with a real database behind it. Add a client. Refresh. It is still there.
Change one thing — add a column, add a screen, reword a label — then Build and Run again. That loop is the whole product: describe, build, look, adjust.
| If you want to | Read |
|---|---|
| Understand the pieces you just used | User manual, chapter 4 |
| See fuller worked examples | Use cases |
| Know what a word means | Glossary |
| Work faster | Keyboard shortcuts |
| Understand what the AI is doing | How PIES AI works |
| Put this on your own infrastructure | Installation guide |