Building backend features with AI

The fastest way to use your Dedicated Cloud is to not touch it at all — describe the feature, and the AI does the backend work and builds the UI on top.

The [estage-dedicated:] tag

Start your message with the tag (or pick Backend feature from the / slash menu):

[estage-dedicated: a community feed where members create and like posts]
[estage-dedicated: a booking form that saves requests and emails me]
[dedicated: live chat with moderation]
[backend: a members-only area with saved favorites]

[estage-dedicated:], [dedicated:], and [backend:] are equivalent. The tag guarantees your request goes to the backend builder — without it, a plainly-worded request might get a beautiful but non-functional front-end. (More on tags in Steering the AI.)

What happens during the turn

You’ll see the progress live in chat:

1. “Cloud: Working on your backend…” — the backend agent inspects what already exists in your cloud, then does the real work, with substeps as it goes: Running SQL…, Deploying function…, Enabling realtime…
2. It creates the tables, security rules (who can read/write what), realtime subscriptions, and any server functions the feature needs.
3. “Cloud: Backend ready. Building the UI…” — the regular builder takes over and creates the pages and components, already wired to your backend.

The result is end-to-end functional: a visitor action on your published site really writes to your database.

If you don’t have a cloud yet

Two paths:

• Ask for a feature that needs persistence (“save form submissions somewhere I can see them”) and Genesis shows a card: “This needs a backend… want me to provision a dedicated cloud?” — answer Yes and it handles it (you’ll be pointed to the plan picker if you haven’t subscribed yet).
• Use the [estage-dedicated:] tag directly — same logic: with an active subscription it auto-provisions a Starter cloud; otherwise it points you to the Cloud tab to pick a plan.

Provisioning takes a few minutes; then re-send your feature request.

Iterating

Follow-ups work like everywhere else in Genesis — and the backend agent stays in the loop when the change touches data:

• “add an edit button to each post” — UI change wired to existing tables.
• “[estage-dedicated: also store the visitor’s city on each post]” — schema change + UI update together.

What your site’s visitors get

Depending on the feature, your published site can now:

• Sign up and log in (email/password, magic links, or social logins you enable)
• Create and read data with per-user permissions enforced server-side
• See live updates without refreshing (new posts, counters, chat)
• Upload files

You manage everything they create from the Cloud workspace — their accounts in Auth, their data in Database, their files in Storage.

Trust but verify

After an [estage-dedicated:] build, open the Database tab — you’ll see the tables it created, and the Policies button shows the access rules in plain presets. It’s a good habit to glance at what got built.