Core concepts
You build apps in PhiWebs Studio: you describe what you want in the chat, an AI agent builds it, and you watch it take shape in a live preview. You do not need to know the app’s file format to do that. These pages explain the few ideas that help you ask for the right thing and understand what you see.
- Apps — One project is one app: its pages, data models, access rules, packs and images, kept together and published at its own address.
- Packs & the marketplace — Where the building blocks come from: the packs your workspace installs from the marketplace.
- Blocks — The typed pieces a page is built from.
- Capabilities — What lets a page keep data, move between pages and react to visitors.
- Data & records — Data models, the records an app keeps, and how the project’s sample records reach the published app.
- Sign-in & roles — Who your visitors are, and what each of them may do in your app.
- Preview & versions — The preview you build in, the published app visitors see, and how to go back.
Vocabulary at a glance
| Term | What it is |
|---|---|
| Workspace | Where your projects live, with its members, plan and installed packs. See Workspaces. |
| Project | One app in the studio, with its chat, files and history. |
| App | What you publish: pages, data models, access rules and the look, served at <app>.phiwebs.app. |
| Page | One screen of the app. |
| Pack | A bundle of blocks, capabilities, patterns and themes, installed from the marketplace. |
| Block | One typed piece of a page: a heading, a form, a table, a gallery. |
| Pattern | A ready arrangement of blocks — a page shell, a contact form, a pricing band — that the agent copies into a page and fills in. |
| Theme | The app’s colours, fonts and spacing, set once for the whole app. |
| Capability | A power a page uses: keeping data, data models, moving between pages, reacting to visitors. |
| Data model | One kind of record the app keeps, such as Booking or Product, and its fields. |
| Record | One entry of a data model. |
| Access rules | Who may create, read, change or delete each kind of record. |
| Role | A name such as staff or admin that the app gives to some of its signed-in visitors. |
| Preview | The running app you build in, at its own address. Not your public address. |
| Version | One published state of the app. Every publish stores one. |
| pwpack | A project’s full source in one file — what Download project gives you. |
Looking for PhiCo, Receipts or surfaces? PhiCo, the earlier composer, is retired, and with it Receipts and the approval list. Apps are now made in PhiWebs Studio, and what used to be called a surface is simply a page.