What the builder will not do

Five limits, and the cheap way to find them

By the end of this you should be able to look at something you were about to ask for and know whether it is a thing this tool does. That is worth a lesson on its own, because the expensive way to find a limit is to spend a turn on it and read the apology afterwards.

None of what follows is a list of things being fixed next quarter. It is the shape of the tool. And two of the five are deliberate — the rules about inventing facts are the most valuable behaviour in the product, and it would be a worse product without them.

• It cannot invent your details, and it will not pretend to.
• It cannot know your prices — and prices do not behave like the details.
• It cannot photograph your work.
• It does not make an app for the app stores.
• It will not consult you about most of what it decides.

Note. Everything here shows up in the same place: the first draft, in front of you, before anybody else has seen it. The last section is a ten-minute read-through that catches all five at once.

It cannot invent your details, and will not pretend to

This is the rule the whole thing rests on, so it is worth understanding rather than working around. A build is forbidden from writing a phone number, an email address, a street address, a certification, a registration number, an insurance policy, a star rating, a review count or a years-in-business figure it was not given. Not a plausible one, not as filler, not as something to swap out later.

The reason is that these end up on a real business's live site. A made-up registration number is not a wording problem, it is a trading-standards problem, and the person who answers for it is you rather than us.

So where it has no real value it writes a plainly marked placeholder and says in one line what it needs from you. That is what the gap on your first draft is. It is not the build losing interest halfway down the page.

1. Put the real ones in the first message: the number, the email, and the trading name you actually use.
2. If you would rather not publish a street address, say so and give the area you cover instead. That is a real fact and it will be used as one.
3. Answer every marked placeholder in a single later message rather than one at a time. Each one is a question waiting for you.
4. If something specific appeared that you did not supply and it is not marked as a placeholder, take it out before the site goes anywhere.

Note. The place to be careful is your own first message, because anything you said in passing is treated as true and written down as fact. "Been doing this about fifteen years" becomes a line on the about page. That is the system working as intended, and it does mean a rough figure typed quickly ends up published.

It cannot know your prices, and prices are the exception

Prices are the exception to the section above, and the exception is the thing that catches people. Where you supplied no real business details, the build is told to write concrete, plausible prices, opening hours and service lists rather than leaving gaps — because a first draft full of holes reads as broken rather than as honest.

So a services list or a shop can come back carrying figures nobody has ever charged. They are not marked as examples. They look exactly as real as the sentences around them, because the same turn wrote both in the same voice.

Where you did give real details, those are the truth and they are used word for word. The invented ones only appear in the space where nothing real was supplied.

Tip. Send real prices as a block in one message: the job, the figure, and whether it is a from price or a fixed one. It is one turn, and it replaces a page of guesses with a page of facts.

Note. If you do not publish prices, say that outright. "No prices on the site, we quote every job" is a real instruction and it produces a page that says so, which is a great deal better than a page carrying numbers you would have to honour. And if you are selling through the site rather than quoting, the prices the checkout uses come from the products list in the dashboard rather than from the page — changing one there needs no build at all.

It cannot photograph your work

There is no camera at this end. What it can do is commission original photographs for the description you typed, so a first draft is not bare. What it cannot do is show your van, your team, your yard, or the job you finished on Tuesday.

The commissioned ones are made under a fixed set of rules, and the rules are why they look the way they do. No people, because image models still put six fingers on a hand and a trade site is mostly hands doing work. No writing and no numbers of any kind, which quietly rules out signage, labels, gauges, price tags and number plates. And nothing whose exact identity would be a claim: your page says our workshop, and a photograph of one particular workshop would be stating which one, which nobody here knows.

The build is also forbidden from using a picture address from anywhere else on the internet, including one it appears to remember. A half-remembered address looks exactly like a real one and gives you a broken image on a live site, which is worse than no image. The only addresses allowed are the ones already sitting in your own files.

• Attach your own on the first message. Uploads are the only pictures of yours that can end up on the site.
• Six of your own beat any number of commissioned ones on a trade site, because the customer is looking for evidence rather than decoration.
• If you have none yet, a site built from colour, drawn shapes and large type is a real design rather than a hole, and photographs can go in later without a rebuild.
• A picture on the site of a particular thing — one van, one shop front, one finished job — can only ever be one you supplied.

Note. There is a whole page on photographs: what a shoot costs, why a free first build gets none, and how to swap one out. This lesson only says which pictures can never exist.

It does not make an app for the app stores

Everything built here runs in a browser. That is true of the websites and it is equally true of the things people call apps — a booking tool, a customer portal, a job tracker, a calculator. They open from a link, they work on a phone, they update the moment you change them, and nobody installs anything.

That is not a phone app. There is no step at the end that produces a build for iOS or Android, nothing to submit to a store, no push notifications, and no access to the camera roll or the contacts or anything else on the device.

For most of what people mean by the word, a browser is enough, and the version somebody can open immediately is usually the better first one anyway. Where you genuinely need the store listing or the device itself, this is the wrong tool for that job and no amount of asking changes it.

Note. That last pair rules out more than people expect: no icon pack, no calendar widget, no font pulled in from another site. Whatever the page needs is written from scratch or drawn. The upside is the one that matters at the end — the project you download runs on its own and does not depend on us being here.

It will not consult you about most of what it decides

This is a limit on the conversation rather than on the software, and it is the one that surprises people most.

It does not ask you anything. Not on the first turn, not later. Where your description leaves something out it is told to make the obvious call and build, rather than stopping to check.

That covers your colours, the order of the sections, which sections exist at all, and how the writing sounds. Those are settled silently every time.

The arithmetic behind it explains the behaviour rather than excusing it. A turn that only asks writes no files, and every turn costs credits — so a question is a build you paid for and did not get. Your first complete build is free, once; everything after it comes out of credits you buy.

What you do get is a line underneath when a guess was a real fork in the road, saying which way it went and inviting you to turn it round. That line is the whole of the conversation you were not asked to have, so it is worth reading before the site itself.

So your first message is the only place those decisions get made by you rather than for you. Everything you leave out is decided well and changed afterwards in a sentence, which is the same number of turns and leaves you with a site to look at in the meantime.

Who decides what

It may ask about

The trade, and the area you cover. Up to two questions, on the first turn of a new project, once.

It decides silently

The colours, the typefaces, the order of the sections, which sections exist at all, and the tone of every sentence.

You decide, if you say so first

All of the above. Anything in your first message overrides what it would have chosen.

You decide afterwards

All of it again, one turn at a time. Later is not worse, it is just later.

Tip. If you care about the colours, the tone or which sections exist, put them in the first message. Saying it up front costs nothing. Asking for it afterwards costs a turn.

Note. Where a guess was a real fork in the road, it says which way it went in one line under the build — something like "I have written it as a Norwich business, say the word and I will change the area". That line is the whole of the conversation, so read it before you read the site.

The read-through that catches all five

Every limit above surfaces in the same place: the first draft, on your screen, before anybody else has seen it. Ten minutes with it is worth more than any amount of worrying beforehand, and it is the single habit that separates people who get a true site out of this from people who publish a plausible one.

1. Read every phone number, email address and street address on the page. Each one is either yours or a marked placeholder — anything else is a mistake to take out now.
2. Read every price and every opening time. Any figure you did not supply was written to fill a gap.
3. Read the testimonials, if there are any, and delete the ones nobody wrote.
4. Read anything carrying a year, a count or a rating, and check it against what you actually said in your first message rather than against what you meant.
5. Look at the photographs and decide honestly whether the site would be better carrying six of your own.
6. Fix the lot in one message with the real values in it, rather than in four turns of corrections.

Tip. The fastest version of the last step is a single plain message: here is the number, here is the email, here are the four prices, and take the reviews off. One turn, and everything on the page is true.

Note. If the read-through finds nothing to change, that is a real result rather than a formality skipped. It means everything on the page came from something you said, which is exactly what all of these limits exist to produce.

Common questions

Why is there a placeholder where my phone number should be?

Because it was not given one, and it is forbidden from making one up — not even a plausible one, because these end up on a real business's live site. The placeholder is marked on purpose and the reply says what it needs. Send the real number and it goes in on the next turn.

Where did these prices come from, if it will not invent a phone number?

Prices, opening hours, service lists and testimonials are treated differently from contact details and registrations. Where nothing real was supplied, plausible ones are written in rather than leaving the page full of gaps, and they are not marked as examples. Read every figure on a first draft and replace the ones that are not yours.

Can I get the finished thing into the App Store?

No. Everything built here runs in a browser, and there is no step at the end producing an iOS or Android build. For most business tools a link is enough and it is the shorter road. If you genuinely need a store listing, this is not the tool for that job, and it is better to know that now than after three turns.

Can it use a plugin or a theme I already have?

No. Nothing installs and nothing is fetched from another site, so there is no plugin system and no theme to apply. Whatever the page needs is written from scratch, which is also why the project you download keeps working with no dependency on us.