---
title: "What Briks does | Briks"
url: https://briks.dev/docs/introduction
description: "Briks plans, designs, builds, checks, hosts and publishes websites, web apps and dashboards from a plain description. What it does, and what it cannot do yet."
last_updated: 2026-10-08
---

# What Briks does

Briks turns a plain description of your business into a working website, web app or dashboard, then keeps it online for you. This page explains what happens between your first sentence and a published site, what you need before you start, and what Briks cannot do yet, so you can plan around it.

8 minute read Checked against the studio on 8 October 2026

## From a description to a live site

You write what you need in ordinary words: who it is for, what it offers, how it should feel and which pages it needs. Briks takes it from there in six stages, and you can follow each one in the project's conversation.

1. **Plan.** Briks reads your description and asks which pages you want. Unless you switch it off, it also asks about anything your words leave open, such as whether you take bookings or show prices. You can answer in a minute, or press **Decide for me** and take its recommendations.
2. **Design.** It settles colours, type, spacing and pictures for your kind of business. If you show it a site you like, it reads its layout, spacing, type, motion and header menu and follows it, without copying its words.
3. **Build.** It writes the pages and the code behind them. A website gets its sections, menu and forms. An app or a dashboard gets its screens and, when it needs to keep information, a database of its own. If building usually takes more credits than you have, it waits once planned, with the plan kept, until you choose **Resume building**.
4. **Check.** Before publishing, Briks checks the contrast of text against its background in the code. After the first publish it checks contrast again on the live page at desktop and phone width, with at most one repair, and makes sure every page you chose is in the menu. An app's code is also read for common security mistakes, such as a key left in a file.
5. **Host.** The site runs on Briks, and hosting is part of your plan. A live site stays online whatever your credit balance.
6. **Publish.** The first publish is a preview at its own address, such as `larder-lane.briks.live`, kept out of search engines. When you are happy, **Publish to production** runs a launch check and makes it a public site in full.

After that, you change the site by typing in the same conversation: 'make the opening hours easier to find', or 'add a page for wholesale customers'. Every build and every change is saved as a version, so you can undo, redo or go back to an earlier one if a change was not what you meant.

## Three kinds of project

When you start a project you choose what you are making. The choice shapes how Briks plans it, which questions it asks and how the screens are laid out.

| Kind | What it is | Good for |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Website | Pages people visit and read, with a menu, pictures and forms. | A bakery, a physiotherapy clinic, a restaurant menu, a wedding photographer's portfolio, a law firm taking enquiries |
| Web app | Screens people use to get something done, keeping what they enter in the project's own database. | Booking requests, a directory you keep up to date yourself, an internal tool to log stock deliveries |
| Dashboard | Figures, charts and tables a team keeps an eye on, laid out as application screens. | Sales by stage, stock to reorder, weekly orders by product |

Websites and web apps start with questions about pages and anything unclear. Dashboards skip those questions and are built straight from the description, and they have no look or hero to choose. The [web apps and dashboards](https://briks.dev/docs/web-apps-and-dashboards) page covers the differences in detail.

## What you need to start

- **An email address you can open.** Your account is confirmed by a link sent to it, and you cannot sign in until you click it.
- **A description of the business or idea.** Ten characters is the minimum, but the best first versions come from a paragraph that says who it is for and where, what it offers, how it should feel and which pages it needs. See [writing a good brief](https://briks.dev/docs/writing-a-brief).
- **Optional: a site you like.** One address, plus screenshots of whole pages or single sections. See [build from a site you like](https://briks.dev/docs/build-from-sites-you-like).
- **Optional: your brand.** An accent colour, light or dark, and the fonts for headlines and text, if they are already fixed. Leave anything else to Briks.
- **Optional: your own photos and videos.** You can add them later from the [media library](https://briks.dev/docs/media-library) or attach them to a message in the conversation.
- **No card.** A new account starts with 50 free credits, which is what a first build holds while it runs. A Free workspace's first site is built in full even when it needs more than that.
- **Later, for your own domain:** a domain you own and the Starter plan or above. Every plan, Free included, gets a `briks.live` address.

## A typical first hour

Here is how the first hour usually goes for someone starting from nothing. The only timing the studio itself promises is that the first version takes a few minutes; the rest depends on how long you spend reading and deciding.

1. Sign up and confirm your email

   Where: app.briks.dev/signup

   Create the account, open the confirmation email and click its link. It signs you in and opens your new workspace, or New project if you started from the box on briks.dev.

2. Describe the business

   Where: New project

   Choose Website, App or Dashboard, give it a name and write the description. This is the step worth slowing down for: a careful paragraph here saves several changes later.

3. Answer the questions

   Where: Studio

   Tick the pages you want and answer what Briks asks. Each question already has a recommended answer selected, so this part is quick.

4. Watch the first build

   Where: Studio

   The conversation shows each stage while the preview waits. When the site is published, it appears beside the conversation.

5. Look at it on every screen size

   Where: Preview

   Switch the preview between desktop, tablet and phone widths, then open it in a new tab and click through every page the way a customer would.

6. Ask for a change or two

   Where: Studio

   Type what you want different in plain words. Each change holds 5 credits while it runs and is charged for the work it took.

7. Publish to production, or share it first

   Where: Top bar

   If you are happy, press **Publish**. Or send the preview address to someone whose opinion you trust before the site goes public.

## What Briks does not do yet

Some things people ask for are not built yet. Knowing them before you write your brief saves a build spent on something that cannot work.

- **Subscriptions through every processor.** Plans that renew need Stripe, Paddle, Polar or Lemon Squeezy, set up under **Settings**, **Payments**. PayPal, Mollie, Razorpay, Creem and Dodo Payments take one-time payments only for now. See [Sign-in and payments](https://briks.dev/docs/sign-in-and-payments).
- **Exporting form entries.** Messages sent through your site's forms are kept in the studio, where the latest 100 are shown, and emailed to you once the site is in production. There is no export button. If you need them somewhere else, a [webhook](https://briks.dev/docs/webhooks) can send each new entry to another service as it arrives.
- **Email from your own domain.** Site email, when you switch it on, sends from an address at `emails.briks.live`, not from your own domain.
- **An exact price before you build.** A job holds a set amount while it runs (50 credits for a new site) and is charged for the work it took, which can be lower or higher. When a build usually takes more credits than you have, the studio says so before it starts, with an estimate from builds like it. See [credits and plans](https://briks.dev/docs/credits-and-plans).
- **A free custom domain.** Your own domain starts on the Starter plan.
- **A public API or an MCP server.** You build and manage sites in the dashboard, or from [Telegram](https://briks.dev/docs/telegram). The only key for your own tools is a project's analytics key on a paid plan, which reads its visitor figures. See [analytics](https://briks.dev/docs/analytics).
- **Syncing with any service other than GitHub.** On a paid plan, a site's files can be kept in step with a GitHub repository and downloaded from the studio. See [GitHub sync](https://briks.dev/docs/github).
- **A full check of every build.** The check at four screen sizes for layout, overlap and links is something you switch on. It does not run on every build unless you ask.
- **Reselling Briks under your own name.** There is no white-label option today. The small Built with Briks badge always shows on Free sites. On a paid plan it is off unless you switch it on.
- **AI agents on the Free plan.** [AI agents](https://briks.dev/docs/ai-agents) that look after a site for you come with paid plans, from Starter.

Plan around the gaps

A shop that posts its goods can ask for shipping in the brief or as a change: Briks builds it into the site with your own payment account, its keys saved under **Settings**, **Secrets**. See [Sign-in and payments](https://briks.dev/docs/sign-in-and-payments). A club whose processor takes one-time payments only can sell each month or term as a one-time payment, or link to the membership service it already uses. A booking tool can collect booking requests through a form, and you confirm each one by phone or email.

## How these docs are organised

The docs follow the order most people work in, from a first account to a team running several sites.

| Section | What it covers | Good first page |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Getting started | Your account, the dashboard, a first site, credits and plans | [Your first site](https://briks.dev/docs/your-first-site) |
| Building | Starting a project, writing a brief, questions, references, looks, pictures, apps and dashboards | [Writing a good brief](https://briks.dev/docs/writing-a-brief) |
| Working on a project | The project page, changes, the Visual Editor, questions, versions, A/B tests, code, sharing, settings and Telegram | [Making changes](https://briks.dev/docs/making-changes) |
| Publishing and domains | Preview and production, your own domain, your site's address, published versions, search engines | [Publish to production](https://briks.dev/docs/publish-to-production) |
| Your site's features | Analytics, the chatbot, forms, site email, media, the image editor, storage and social posts | [Forms](https://briks.dev/docs/forms) |
| Data and automation | The database, backups, scheduled tasks, webhooks, secrets and logs | [Database](https://briks.dev/docs/database) |
| AI agents | Hiring agents, the Team lead, approvals and budgets, and the Security agent | [Hire AI agents](https://briks.dev/docs/ai-agents) |
| Workspaces and account | Teams and roles, handing a site to a client, billing, templates, your profile and Made with Briks | [Members and roles](https://briks.dev/docs/members-and-roles) |
| Help | Fixes for common problems and answers to common questions | [Troubleshooting](https://briks.dev/docs/troubleshooting) |

If you are new, read [Create your account](https://briks.dev/docs/create-your-account), take the [tour of the dashboard](https://briks.dev/docs/exploring-the-dashboard), then follow [Your first site](https://briks.dev/docs/your-first-site) with your own business in mind. Anything that sounds like jargon is explained in [Words we use](https://briks.dev/docs/glossary).

How to read the labels

Words in bold, such as **Publish** or **New project**, are written exactly as the dashboard shows them, so you can look for them on screen. Text like `larder-lane.briks.live` is something you type or see exactly as written.

## Read next

- [Getting started **Create your account** Sign up with your email or Google, confirm the link we send, sign in, join a workspace from an invitation, and see where your 50 free credits come from.](https://briks.dev/docs/create-your-account)
- [Getting started **Exploring the dashboard** A guided tour of the Briks dashboard: the navigation, Home, Projects, Templates, Agents, Jump to, notifications, your credits and the tabs inside a project.](https://briks.dev/docs/exploring-the-dashboard)
- [Getting started **Your first site** Follow one small bakery from New project to a preview on briks.live, a first change in the chat and Publish to production, with every screen shown in order.](https://briks.dev/docs/your-first-site)
- [Getting started **Credits and plans** How Briks credits work: holds of 50 and 5, charges for the work done, estimates and builds that wait, what happens at zero, and what each plan includes.](https://briks.dev/docs/credits-and-plans)

Still stuck?

Write to [hello@briks.dev](mailto:hello@briks.dev) with your project's name and what you expected to see. A screenshot helps.