Build and download a project

When an operator enables building, Starchat prepares a project from the conversation. The download contains source files and instructions for working locally. It is not a transcript of the chat.

Enable the work your installation supports

Building is off by default. An operator enables building.enabled and supplies building.instructions in installation.json. Those instructions cannot widen the installation's scope. Visitor messages cannot replace these settings. Install PHP's zip extension on the chat server and rebuild the knowledge index. See Install Starchat for the configuration example.

Projects can use any language allowed by your installation, including Python or Java. The generated project does not need Stage or PHP. Define the intended users, a first useful behavior, and constraints in the conversation. Suggestions are proposals until the visitor chooses them.

Download when preparation finishes

After a completed answer, the browser automatically prepares the current project in the background. The generator and an independent reviewer use the actual conversation and any previous generated files. The visitor can keep chatting.

Download project ZIP appears only after generation, review, and ZIP creation succeed. Clicking downloads that prepared archive without a model request. Repeating the download reuses the same archive. Missing essential decisions or an out-of-scope result produce no download.

A preparation failure offers Prepare again. It retries the current state only when the visitor selects it. Ordinary redraws do not repeat failed attempts. Attempt tracking is local to the open page. A reload or another tab can start preparation again when no matching ready archive is saved.

Keep the archive aligned with the conversation

A new question hides the obsolete download. After the answer, preparation uses the previous files and updated conversation to create a complete replacement. The browser stores the latest successful project under the installation's separate :project key. Saving a replacement overwrites the older archive under that key. Obsolete Blob URLs, the browser's temporary download addresses, are released.

Missing-details and out-of-scope results remove the saved archive. New conversation clears it too. Files already downloaded onto the visitor's device remain there. The website cannot update or delete those local copies.

A new question, language change, or reset cancels preparation in progress. Late results cannot replace the current state. If browser storage fails, a ready download remains available in memory. Changes made to files outside the chat cannot be uploaded or synchronized.

Inspect the project before using it

The ZIP contains source files, a README with setup, run, and check instructions, PROJECT.md with decisions and open questions, and .gitignore. It includes a fresh Git repository on main, with no commits, index, identity, hooks, or remote. Extracted files are untracked and ready for the visitor's first commit. Install dependencies and platform SDKs locally. The archive does not bundle third-party binaries or dependency trees.

The service does not execute generated code or deploy it. Independent review checks the proposed files but cannot establish that they work. Read them and run the documented checks locally before relying on the result.

Account for automatic processing and limits

Automatic preparation uses the installation's model account, profile, and request capacity in addition to the chat answer. The model receives the conversation and previous generated files when available. Before enabling building, describe this processing and browser storage in the installation's privacy notice.

Input allows up to 80 messages and 24 KiB of serialized conversation, within a 192 KiB HTTP request. Output permits 40 UTF-8 text files, 16 KiB each, and 32 KiB per serialized project. Oversized input is rejected without dropping earlier requirements. See operations for request capacity and generation deadlines. Rate limits are not a spending cap.

Temporary ZIP files are removed after each server request. Starchat keeps no server-side project archive. This does not establish how long the model provider retains submitted data. Verify the actual provider settings and terms.