Refining with follow-ups
The first draft rarely lands perfectly, and it isn't supposed to. Refinement is the real work — here's how to steer it without wasting a turn.
Once a site exists, every chat message builds on what's already there. You're not re-describing the site each time; you're nudging it. Small, specific follow-ups get you a predictable result far more reliably than one sprawling request trying to fix six things at once.
Apply now, or plan first
Chat gives you two ways to make a change, and the right one depends on how sure you are:
- Apply makes the edit straight to the canvas (3 credits). Reach for it when the change is clear — “make the hero headline bigger,” “swap the two feature columns.”
- Plan first previews what the AI intends to do before it touches anything (1 credit). Use it for bigger or vaguer asks, where seeing the plan is cheaper than undoing the result.
Every generation is versioned, so an edit that misses is never a dead end — you can roll back and try a different phrasing.
One idea per message
A follow-up that asks for one clear change lands cleanly. Stack five unrelated changes into a paragraph and the AI has to prioritize and interpret — and the results get harder to predict. Chain instead: make a move, look at the result, make the next one. The conversation remembers the earlier turns, so the context carries.
Make the hero background darker. → Now tighten the spacing between the hero and the features. → Change the CTA button to say “Start free.”
What chat can't touch
Chat edits the component tree — layout, sections, copy, styling, even setting heading and body fonts by name. It's read-only on articles and content types, though: it can see them as context, but creating, editing, or deleting entries happens in the Articles panel and Content Types, not through chat. Asking chat to “add a blog post” won't work; asking it to “style the blog list” will.
One image per message
Chat isn't always the fastest tool
Chat is best for broad, structural, or copy-level changes. For small, precise tweaks you can often skip it entirely — and editing outside of AI is free, so it saves credits too:
- Visual editor for nudging spacing, colors, and type by hand — per breakpoint, right on the canvas.
- Code editor when you want to touch the Astro source directly and know exactly what to change.
A good rhythm: chat for the big moves, the canvas for the finishing touches. Reserve AI turns for changes that genuinely need generation.
Skip the credit meter entirely