Recent updates to the Caffeine platform, newest first.
May 2026
Building a new app from scratch now requires a paid plan or on-demand credits — May 21, 2026
Starting a new app from scratch now requires an active paid subscription (Starter, Plus, or Pro) or any on-demand credits — daily credits still cover remixing any App Market app and iterating on the remix on every plan, so remixing from the App Market is now the recommended Free-plan path for starting to build. See Plans and Pricing.
Dot indicators on mobile Chat and Preview tabs — May 19, 2026
On mobile, a small dot now appears on the Chat or Preview tab when there are unread messages or a new draft waiting — so you can see at a glance that something needs your attention without switching tabs. See Sending Messages While a Build Is Running.
Guided mode is now the default build mode — May 18, 2026
New users now start in Guided mode, where Caffeine asks clarifying questions before building — giving the AI more context and producing more accurate first results. See Choosing a Build Mode.
Breakdown by service panel removed from Credit Usage — May 15, 2026
The "Breakdown by service" panel that previously appeared on the Credit Usage screen has been removed; your credit balance and full transaction history remain available as before. See Understanding Credits.
App icon is now required to publish to the App Market — May 15, 2026
An app icon must be set before you can submit a listing — you can upload your own image or generate one with AI for 1 credit. See Publishing to the App Market.
App icon can now be generated with AI in the listing form — May 11, 2026
The App Market listing form now has a dedicated App Icon tab where you can upload an icon or generate one using AI for 1 credit — and the thumbnail upload limit has increased from 5 MB to 7 MB. See Publishing to the App Market.
OpenAI integration now available for Caffeine apps — May 8, 2026
You can now add chatbot, ChatGPT, embeddings, and other OpenAI-powered features to your app — describe what you want and Caffeine sets up the integration automatically, including a secure API key management interface. See Packages and Skills.
X/Twitter posting now available in Caffeine apps — May 8, 2026
Your apps can now post tweets, retweets, quote-tweets, and status updates to X on behalf of your users — the AI sets up the full OAuth 2.0 connection and admin configuration automatically. See What Caffeine Can and Cannot Build.
Daily credits now capped at 25 per calendar month — May 8, 2026
Free daily credits are now limited to a maximum of 25 per calendar month — once the cap is reached, your next refill is deferred to the start of the following month; the out-of-credits notice also now shows exactly when your daily credits return. See Understanding Credits.
Browser notifications for build events — May 6, 2026
Caffeine can now send browser notifications when a draft is ready, your app goes live, a build fails, or the AI is waiting for your input — so you can step away while a build runs and be alerted the moment something needs your attention. See Sending Messages While a Build Is Running.
Search the App Market by creator username — May 6, 2026
You can now find apps in the App Market by searching for a creator's username — type it in the search bar and matching apps from that creator will appear in the results. See The App Market.
Upload your own code as a ZIP file — May 6, 2026
Paid subscribers can now upload a ZIP file (up to 20 MB) from project settings to replace their project's code and create a new draft — useful for bringing back externally edited source code without needing a GitHub connection. See Downloading and Uploading Your Project Code.
Generated files now stream into the Code panel during a build — May 2, 2026
While the AI is building your app, files now appear in the Code panel progressively as they are written — previously, generated files could be delayed or absent until the build finished. See How the AI Builder Works.
April 2026
Live Apps button added to the project chat header — April 30, 2026
A Live Apps button now appears in the project chat header on desktop, giving you quick access to your live apps from any project without leaving the chat. See Publishing and Sharing Your App.
Introductory plan pricing is now marked as new-users-only — April 29, 2026
When a discounted intro price appears on a paid plan, a "New users only" badge now makes clear that the offer is available once per account to users who have not previously held a paid subscription. See Plans and Pricing.
Image files now preview visually in the code explorer — April 28, 2026
When you select an image file in the code explorer panel, the panel now displays the actual image instead of raw file data — making it easy to identify assets at a glance. See Editing and Managing Your App.
Deployments now have up to 10 minutes to complete — April 28, 2026
The deployment step now waits up to 10 minutes before timing out, reducing false failures for larger apps or slower conditions that previously timed out too early. See When Deployments Fail.
GitHub Export confirmation now accurately shows the export is queued, not instant — April 27, 2026
After clicking to export your project to GitHub, the confirmation dialog now says "Export queued" and explains that your code will typically be synced within 5 minutes — replacing a message that incorrectly implied the export had already completed. See Syncing your Project with GitHub.
Credits now refunded on all build failures, including container crashes and timeouts — April 27, 2026
If a build session ends unexpectedly — for example, because the AI container crashed or the session timed out mid-build — any credits charged at the start of that build are now automatically refunded to your account. See Understanding Credits.
AI-generated content for App Market listings — April 25, 2026
You can now let AI fill in your listing's short description, full description, category, and tags with one click, and generate a promotional thumbnail image directly in the listing form — AI-generated images cost 1 credit each. See Publishing to the App Market.
Take offline — April 25, 2026
You can now permanently take a live app offline from project settings, tearing down live infrastructure and returning the project to a clean state so you can go live again from scratch. Open project settings → More → Take offline. This action cannot be undone. See Publishing and Sharing Your App.
Free plan now shows parallel app work as an included benefit — April 23, 2026
The free plan now highlights "Work on 3 apps in parallel" as an included feature, making it clear that you can actively build and iterate across up to 3 projects at the same time at no cost. See Plans and Pricing.
Publish to the App Market directly from the App Market sidebar — April 23, 2026
A new "Publish on app market" button is now available in the App Market sidebar, so you can start the publish flow without leaving the App Market or returning to the builder. See Publishing to the App Market.
Clarification answers now resume the paused build instead of starting a new one — April 23, 2026
When the AI pauses to ask clarifying questions in Guided mode, your reply is now delivered directly to that waiting session so the build resumes from where it left off — previously, answering a clarification could accidentally trigger a second build instead of continuing the first. See Sending Messages While a Build Is Running.
Asking the AI about build progress now gives accurate, live answers — April 22, 2026
When you ask "is it done?", "is it still running?", or similar questions, the AI now checks the live build state before answering — so you get a reliable report of what is happening rather than a guess based on the last message. See Sending Messages While a Build Is Running.
App Market listings now show a custom app icon — April 22, 2026
Creators can now upload a custom icon image (JPEG, PNG, WebP, or GIF, up to 2 MB) when publishing or editing an App Market listing — the icon appears alongside the app name in browse views and on the detail page, with a default placeholder used for apps that do not have one. See Publishing to the App Market.
GitHub Import — April 22, 2026
You can now import code from your connected GitHub repository back into Caffeine, making it easy to bring edits you made in GitHub into your project as a new draft. See Syncing your Project with GitHub.
Paid plan project limit increased to 200 — April 21, 2026
Subscribers on Starter, Plus, and Pro can now create up to 200 projects, up from 100. See Plans and Pricing.
Out-of-credits message now appears in chat when a build cannot start — April 21, 2026
If your credits run out at the exact moment a new build begins, Caffeine now posts an out-of-credits message directly in the chat — previously this produced no feedback and the session ended silently. See Understanding Credits.
Remix any draft version into a new project — April 21, 2026
You can now remix any committed draft version of your own project into a brand-new independent project — the remix copies the code, assets, and build for that version, starts a fresh deployment automatically, and leaves the original project untouched. See Editing and Managing Your App.
Smarter low-credits notice based on your account type — April 17, 2026
When your credits run low, the notice above the chat input now shows a tailored message and action depending on whether you are a visitor, a free user, or a subscriber — making it quicker to take the right next step. See Understanding Credits.
Credit usage now shows a breakdown by service — April 16, 2026
The Credit Usage screen now includes a "Breakdown by service" panel that shows how your credits were spent across different services during the current calendar month, with transaction counts and totals grouped by service category. See Understanding Credits.
Free plan now limited to 3 projects — April 16, 2026
Free accounts can now create up to 3 projects; upgrading to any paid plan removes this limit. See Plans and Pricing.
Build credits now charged upfront and refunded on failure — April 16, 2026
Credits for an AI build are now deducted when the build starts rather than when it succeeds — if the build fails for any reason, the credits are automatically returned to your account. See Understanding Credits.
Subscription vouchers — April 15, 2026
Voucher codes can now grant a time-limited paid subscription — for example, 1 month of Plus — instead of credits, giving access to the full plan allowance and premium features for the voucher period. See Understanding Credits.
Search the App Market by name — April 15, 2026
You can now search for apps in the App Market by name — a search icon in the header opens an instant-results dropdown as you type, and pressing Enter takes you to a full Search page with paginated results. See The App Market.
Draft apps now stay active for up to 8 hours — April 15, 2026
Draft canisters now remain active for up to 8 hours of inactivity before expiring, up from the previous 2 hours — giving you more time between sessions without losing your draft. See Publishing and Sharing Your App.
Email verification credit reward reduced to 20 — April 10, 2026
The one-time credit reward for verifying your email address has changed from 110 credits to 20 credits. See Understanding Credits.
Build status indicator now appears as soon as the AI starts working — April 9, 2026
A status indicator now appears above the chat input the moment the AI begins working — showing "Reasoning" during the planning phase and a live task count once work is underway — so you can see activity immediately, before the first task is even planned. See How the AI Builder Works.
Apps with non-ASCII filenames now publish to the App Market correctly — April 8, 2026
A bug that caused App Market publishing to fail when a project contained asset files with non-ASCII characters in their names — such as accented letters, Cyrillic, or CJK characters — has been fixed. Affected users would have seen the publish operation fail without a clear explanation.
Camera capture and QR codes now available in your apps — April 7, 2026
Your apps can now capture photos and video directly from the device camera, and scan or display QR codes — useful for check-in flows, profile photos, document scanning, ticketing, and more. See What Caffeine Can and Cannot Build.
New multi-agent build architecture — April 7, 2026
Caffeine now uses a team of specialist AI agents to build your app — Discovery, Product, Design, Frontend, Backend, and Quality — coordinated by an orchestrator called the Composer. Work is organized into waves where independent tasks run in parallel and results flow forward between waves. Every build starts with a fresh scan of your project, so the AI never loses track of your app regardless of project size or how many drafts you've been through. See How the AI Builder Works.
Real-time build progress — April 7, 2026
You can now see exactly what Caffeine is doing while it builds your app. A task checklist shows which tasks are running, completed, failed, or skipped. You can also stop a build mid-flight if you want to change direction. See Sending Messages While a Build Is Running.
Smarter error recovery — April 7, 2026
Caffeine now checks for errors at every stage of a build, not just at the end. Failed tasks are retried automatically with the error details and learnings from the failure. The Composer can go back and dispatch earlier agents again if a later stage discovers a problem. Deployment errors also flow back to the AI, which attempts a fix and retries before reporting the failure. See When Builds Fail and When Deployments Fail.
Build modes simplified to Instant and Guided — April 7, 2026
The three build modes (Instant, Thinking, Pro) have been consolidated into two: Instant (build immediately, no questions) and Guided (ask clarifying questions before building, then confirm). See Choosing a Build Mode.
Design brief for every app — April 7, 2026
A dedicated Design agent now creates a structured design brief before any frontend code is written — covering colors, typography, spacing, and layout guidelines. All frontend agents follow this brief, producing more coherent visual results. You can influence the brief through your prompt or modify it directly. See Influencing Your App's Visual Design.
Version history panel — April 7, 2026
Click the version badge in the top-right corner of the app preview panel to open a version history view listing all your previous draft versions with timestamps. You can revert to any previous version directly from this panel. Note that you cannot revert to a version older than the one currently live — this protects your live users' data.
Automatic project migration — April 7, 2026
Older projects are now automatically migrated to the current toolchain when you open them. This includes restructuring older project formats, migrating Motoko data structures from older libraries to current ones, and upgrading internal components to published packages. Projects that were previously stuck should now be able to build and iterate again. See Migrating Older Projects.
Chat and UI improvements — April 7, 2026
A number of interface improvements ship with this release:
- Code panel is now a separate tab. The code viewer is no longer the default right panel. You see the app preview first. Code is a tab alongside App and Specs, positioned as a power-user feature.
- Responsive preview. You can preview your app at different screen sizes — desktop, tablet, and phone — directly in the preview panel.
- Version history. Click the version badge in the top-right corner of the app preview panel to browse all your previous draft versions with timestamps. You can revert to any version directly from this panel.
- Code diffs. Click "View code changes" on any past build in your chat to see a side-by-side diff of what changed in that version.
- Collapsible sidebar. The sidebar now collapses to a narrow icon strip on desktop, giving more room to the chat and preview panels. It expands as an overlay when you need it.
- Sidebar search. A search field in the sidebar lets you filter your project list by name.
- File drag-and-drop. You can now drag and drop files directly onto the chat input area to attach them to your prompt.
Build failures now show a distinct error message — April 2, 2026
When a build fails, Caffeine now shows a specific "Something went wrong while building your app" message instead of a generic deployment error, making it easier to tell at a glance whether the problem was in the build step or the publishing step. See When Builds Fail.
March 2026
Browse the App Market by category — March 30, 2026
The App Market Explore page now shows a scrollable Categories section — click any category card to open a dedicated page listing all apps in that category, with sorting and load-more support. See The App Market.
Content manager suggestion now triggers at 5 or more uploaded images — March 30, 2026
Uploading 5 or more images now always prompts the AI to suggest a content manager before building, regardless of what kind of app you are making. See Uploading Images, Videos, and Files into Your App.
Voice input now shows an error if transcription fails — March 27, 2026
If a speech recording cannot be transcribed — due to a network issue or a temporary problem — Caffeine now shows an error message so you know to try again, instead of silently doing nothing. See Dictating Your Prompts with Voice Input.
Expired drafts now restore automatically when you open a project — March 25, 2026
If your draft has expired but your project has a previously deployed version, Caffeine now automatically restores the preview the moment you open the project — no button to click. A loading bar in the preview panel shows progress while the app starts up. See Publishing and Sharing Your App.
GitHub Export failures now surface a clear message — March 24, 2026
If a manual GitHub export cannot complete because another export was already running, Caffeine now notifies you in chat so you know to try again. See Troubleshooting GitHub Export.
Upload videos directly into your app — March 24, 2026
You can now upload video files (MP4, WebM, MOV) alongside images and PDFs — the AI stages them as public assets in your app and embeds them using a video player automatically. See Uploading Images, Videos, and Files into Your App.
GitHub Export now sends chat updates when your export starts and finishes — March 24, 2026
When you push your project to GitHub, Caffeine now posts messages in your chat to confirm the export has been queued, let you know when it completes, and alert you if something goes wrong — so you always know the status without having to check GitHub manually. See Syncing your Project with GitHub.
Suspended App Market listings no longer count toward your quota — March 24, 2026
Only apps that are in review or published now count toward your plan's App Market listing limit — suspended apps are excluded, so a suspended listing no longer blocks you from submitting a new one. See Publishing to the App Market.
Chat attachments now protect files from being overwritten by the AI — March 23, 2026
If the AI tries to save a generated asset with the same filename as one of your chat attachments, it now skips that file and shows a warning in the chat rather than silently overwriting or failing — so your uploaded files are always safe. See Sharing Files with the AI Using Chat Attachments.
Confirmation message now appears when your own domain is successfully assigned — March 23, 2026
When you connect a domain from an external registrar and it activates successfully, Caffeine now sends a confirmation message in the project chat — previously that message was missing for this workflow. See Connecting a Domain You Already Own.
Bring Your Own Domain — March 23, 2026
You can now connect a domain purchased from any external registrar (such as GoDaddy or Namecheap) to a Caffeine app by adding a CNAME DNS record, with an optional apex redirect for visitors who type the apex (naked) domain. See Connecting a Domain You Already Own.
Live button now opens a quick-action dropdown — March 23, 2026
After your app goes live, the Go live button becomes a Live button that opens a dropdown with one-click options to open your live app, copy its link, or push a pending version update — no need to open project settings. See Publishing and Sharing Your App.
App Market listings now go through automated content review before publishing — March 23, 2026
When you submit an app to the App Market, Caffeine now automatically scans it for content compliance. Your app is published if the scan passes, or suspended if it does not, and you receive a notification in your AI Assistant either way. See Publishing to the App Market.
Manage your App Market listings from the app detail page — March 20, 2026
App creators can now unpublish, archive, publish, and perform other listing management actions directly from an app's detail page in the App Market, without navigating to their creator profile or edit page. See Publishing to the App Market.
Generated images are now automatically optimized after every build — March 19, 2026
After each successful build, Caffeine now removes any generated images that are no longer used in your app's code, and compresses the remaining ones — keeping your app lean without any extra steps from you. See How Caffeine Generates Images for Your App.
Reset app data option added for live apps — March 19, 2026
You can now redeploy your currently live version and permanently erase all of its data in one step — useful for cleaning up test data on your live app before announcing it to real users. See Publishing and Sharing Your App.
Chat attachments and file management — March 19, 2026
You can now upload files directly into the chat and manage them from a dedicated Attachments screen in Project Settings. Upload images, PDFs, and documents for the AI to use as context. The Attachments screen shows file sizes, upload dates, and storage usage against your plan limits, with hover-to-download and bulk delete with confirmation. See Sharing Files with the AI Using Chat Attachments.
Archive App Market listings to free up your quota — March 18, 2026
You can now archive a published or draft App Market listing to remove it from the App Market reversibly — archived apps can be restored to draft and republished at any time. Archiving frees up a slot in your plan's quota, since only in-review, published, and suspended apps now count toward the limit. See Publishing to the App Market.
Custom color themes and dark mode now apply correctly — March 16, 2026
A bug that caused the AI's custom color tokens, dark mode styles, and brand colors to be silently ignored in new apps has been fixed — your design requests are now correctly applied. See Getting the Most Out of Caffeine – How to Prompt Effectively.
The AI now learns about you over time — March 16, 2026
Caffeine now remembers things you share about yourself — such as your role, industry, goals, and preferences — and uses that context to give you more relevant responses as you build. See How the AI Builder Works.
App Market is publicly accessible — March 11, 2026
Anyone can now browse the App Market without a Caffeine account. Clicking Remix on an app automatically creates an account for first-time visitors. See The App Market.
Business billing and tax IDs — March 9, 2026
When subscribing or purchasing credits, you can now provide a business name, billing address, and tax ID (VAT number, EIN, or equivalent) at checkout. These details appear on your invoice. See Billing and Payments.
Email verification required before subscribing — March 9, 2026
A confirmed email address is now required before upgrading to a paid plan. Users without a verified email are redirected to complete verification first. See Plans and Pricing.
Smarter handling of image collections — March 9, 2026
When you upload multiple images that look like a gallery, catalog, or repeating-content pattern, the AI now proactively suggests building a content manager rather than embedding images as static files. See Uploading Images and Uploading Your Own Images.
Expanded font support — March 9, 2026
The set of fonts bundled with generated apps has been updated with new additions, and apps can now fall back to Google Fonts for typefaces not in the bundled set. See What Caffeine Can and Cannot Build.
GitHub Export now requires a draft — March 9, 2026
The Push to GitHub option is only available once your project has at least one built draft. See GitHub Export Overview.