Three ways to edit the same site, and why we kept all three
Author: Priya Raman at Zitegen
Most AI site builders pick a side. Either you get a chat box and a locked-down template, or you get a real code editor and lose the AI the moment you touch it. We kept both, plus a visual canvas in between, because the people who use Zitegen aren't one type of user — they're often the same user on two different days.
The founder on day one
Describe the site, get something live, adjust colors and copy from the style panel and canvas. No code touched, nothing to learn. This is most of the value for most people, and it stays available for as long as they want it — there's no forced graduation to "real" editing.
The developer on day thirty
The same person, three weeks in, wants to add a conditional class or fix a flex-wrap edge case faster than clicking through a style panel. They open Monaco, edit the .astro file directly, and save. Because that file was compiled from the tree — not hand-authored separately — the save parses the data-zitegen-id attributes back out and writes the change into the same tree the canvas reads from.
Why not just pick one
The moment you force someone out of AI chat and into code, you've told them the AI's job is done. That's rarely true — most sites get touched by prompts again after their first manual edit.
Keeping all three editing layers writing to one tree means switching between them costs nothing. Generate a new section with AI chat, nudge its spacing on the canvas, then open the code editor to add a data attribute the visual tools don't expose yet — all in one session, all landing in the same source of truth.