Frequently Asked Questions

Buildpad.ai is an AI-ready Rapid Application Development platform. The platform itself is the control plane: you use it in the browser to manage organizations and members, create projects and microapps, provision each project’s DaaS backend, store third-party credentials as connectors, watch builds, and run background workers.

You write the application code in your own AI IDE. The platform generates a starter for it, pre-wired to your project’s backend, so your AI agent works with your real data model and conventions from the first prompt. See The Buildpad Ecosystem for how the pieces divide the work.

For the platform, no — organizations, projects, builds, connectors, and DaaS Studio all run in the browser.

For building an application, yes. The development workflow is local:

• One of the supported AI IDEs — VS Code with GitHub Copilot, Kiro, Claude Code, or Antigravity.
• Node.js with npm/npx available. The starter’s app scaffold is created locally with npx @buildpad/cli@latest bootstrap, and the component-library MCP server runs through npx.
• pnpm, which the starter’s build spec and component commands use.

You write code in your own IDE on your machine, not in the platform. There is no in-browser code editor or terminal in the current release.

The platform’s job is everything around the code: provisioning your backend, handing your IDE a pre-configured starter, storing connector credentials, tracking builds and deployments, and running workers.

In a git repository provisioned for your project, plus your local checkout. The starter download arrives with git already initialized and the remote configured, so your first git push goes to the right place without any setup. Microapps get their own repository; the main app uses the project’s.

Access is gated by organization membership and role permissions, and each project’s credentials are scoped to that project. Connector credentials are encrypted before they are stored.

Yes. Create an organization, invite members, and assign roles. Roles carry explicit permissions, so access is deliberate rather than all-or-nothing — separate permissions cover inviting and managing members, creating, updating, and deleting projects, creating and deleting microapps, starting and stopping DaaS, updating the DaaS version, creating backups, and managing connectors.

Members see the organization’s projects; what they can change depends on the role they hold. See Organizations.

The agent runs in your IDE — Copilot, Kiro, Claude Code, or Antigravity — so code generation, file edits, and terminal commands all happen locally, under your review. Buildpad’s contribution is context and reach:

• Instruction and steering files in the starter teach the agent your stack, API standards, and component conventions.
• Skills and subagents give it repeatable procedures for tasks like adding a collection or wiring up a form.
• Three MCP servers connect it to the ecosystem: buildpad for the component library, daas for your live data model, and buildpad-platform for project context and deployment actions.

The platform’s own MCP tools are deliberately narrow: read project details, and manage the deployment side — read and set Amplify environment variables, trigger a redeploy, check build status, and pull build, access, or compute logs.

Through the MCP configuration in your starter. The platform generates it with your project’s DaaS URL and a project-scoped token already filled in, written to the right path for your IDE (.kiro/settings/mcp.json, .vscode/mcp.json, .mcp.json, or .gemini/antigravity/mcp_config.json).

Once those servers connect, the agent can read your collections and fields from DaaS, look up components in the library, and see which organization, project, and microapp it’s working in — without you pasting any of it into the chat.

DaaS is your project’s data backend. It holds your collections and fields, enforces roles and policies, serves a REST API plus an MCP endpoint, and runs server-side automation like event hooks, workflows, and cron jobs. Every app and microapp in a project shares one DaaS instance.

The platform provisions it for you and shows its status on the project’s DaaS page — a green indicator means it’s ready, and you can start or stop it from there if your role allows. To work with the data itself, launch DaaS Studio from Services & Integrations. DaaS has its own documentation at docs.daas.buildpad.ai .

They are three products that share one project:

• Buildpad Platform (app.buildpad.ai ) governs and provisions — organizations, members, projects, microapps, workers, connectors, and the AI IDE starters. That’s what this documentation covers.
• Buildpad DaaS (docs.daas.buildpad.ai ) stores and enforces — your data model, access control, files, and server-side automation.
• Buildpad UI (ui.buildpad.ai ) renders — the React component library your app is built from, browsable as live Storybooks.

The Buildpad Ecosystem walks through the handoffs between them and lists which docs site answers which question.

At ui.buildpad.ai , which hosts live Storybooks for the component packages — interfaces  (the component behind each DaaS field type), forms , and files . Components are installed into your project as source you own with npx @buildpad/cli@latest, so you can edit them freely afterwards.

Yes, but they aren’t picked at project creation. Creating a project asks for a name and description, with optional backend configuration and connectors — no template choice.

The starter comes later, per IDE, from the AI IDE Setup section on a project’s or microapp’s Details page. Pick your IDE and the platform generates a starter carrying that IDE’s instruction format, skills, and MCP configuration along with your project’s credentials. If you already have a project checked out, the same section offers an agent-files-only download that adds a second IDE’s assets without touching your app code or git state.

Contact the Buildpad.ai team for current pricing and plan information.

Separately from pricing, each organization has quotas — a maximum number of projects and microapps — set by platform administrators. Your organization’s usage against those limits is visible on the projects screen.

Start with Troubleshooting for common platform issues. For code-level questions, ask the agent in your IDE: it has your project’s context through MCP, so it can inspect your real schema and configuration instead of guessing. For anything account- or billing-related, contact the Buildpad.ai team.