Hi everyone,
This is the April community update. You can read last month’s update here. A few thoughts before I get into things:
If you haven’t RSVPed yet, Emmanuel is hosting his next AMA on April 9. RSVP here to ask questions about any of the updates in this post or the broader roadmap we shared earlier this year.
When Opus 4.6/Codex 5.3 both dropped on Feb 3, this was a watershed moment for AI coding. Myself, @brian.levee, and a growing number of Bubble team members have been spending more and more time building with agentic coding tools to prototype ideas and build workflows. We think they’ve crossed the threshold where agentic coding tools can start really transforming how fast we evolve our product, even with Bubble’s large, complicated codebase. We’ve been creating space for the engineering team to master the new tools and figure out how to deploy them successfully in our code base with the goal of allowing us to radically increase how fast we ship.
The new future of AI-assisted coding is exciting. Our mission is to build the best language to do it in — and we think, for most people, using Javascript is a mistake. (I wrote more about that here.) We think we can do better, and that’s the future we’re building toward.
On a lighter note — our team employs some of the best Bubble Developers in the world, and they surprised us at a recent team demo session by showing off a bunch of games they created in their free time. Check it out here. Do you think you have what it takes to make a game that fun in Bubble? Are you building something else really cool? We want to hear about it! Fill out our story form here and the team may reach out to you to feature your app.
Let’s get into the updates.
What we shipped last month
All new and blank templated apps have AI Agent access, which is the first phase in rolling this out to all apps. We know that’s not as relevant for most of you in the forum because you have robust existing apps, but we’re excited that the ball is rolling here. More on next phases of this project later in the update.
We also made some improvements to AI app generation: Headers, footers, and sidebars now all generate as reusable elements. This will save time in future editing and make your app more visually consistent across pages.
We shipped v1 of an integration between the Agent and Bubble’s issue checker, which it previously couldn’t access. Now the Agent can see and explain errors flagged. Fuller integration requires deeper work on the issue checker; more on this coming soon.
Under the hood, we completed some improvement work on the AI service that powers app gen. This work validates whether the AI-generated JSON is consistent with Bubble’s language and will help catch errors before they cause problems in your app. We’ve shipped validation for elements like buttons, inputs, and text. You should already see fewer issues upon initial generation. The next phase will cover validation for static things that aren’t elements, like events, actions, and custom states.
On the mobile front, we shipped a couple high-impact features: Magic login links are now available on mobile for password reset flows, meaning you don’t need a separate web app to reset your users’ passwords. You can build this functionality by selecting a mobile view when setting up a Send magic login link workflow. Read more on the forum here.
Another highly-anticipated mobile feature shipped yesterday: deep linking via push notifications. This allows you to send end-users to a specific view in their app when they tap a notification. This update is the first step toward broader deep linking capability, which we’ll keep you posted on. You can read more on the forum here.
We released a few additional improvements to the API Connector tab based on your feedback, including a fix where dynamic parameters could duplicate or ghost after deletion. Streaming chunks are now correctly detected in the API Connector tab and streaming calls work in both the plugin editor and API Connector tab. We also added a three-dot “context menu” that’s useful for API call collections: You can access cut, copy, paste, rename, add call, delete, and notes actions directly. Lastly, API connector changes now live in their own changelog category instead of being lumped in with plugins.
We’ve been steadily working on usability improvements for the new property editor. The latest: making constraints and sort-by options accessible inline. Previously these lived in popovers, so these improvements make them more accessible and reduce clicks. We also added back element positioning (make element first/previous/next), along with accompanying keyboard shortcuts for faster editing. You can expect the next bigger forum update from our team on that in the next week or so.
We upgraded our platform’s database, which improved the speed of a number of data operations and overall performance. The biggest wins we’re seeing are in operations that insert or update data, up to 25% faster. Searching databases is up to 20% faster, and retrieving data is up to 11% faster. I know that work that requires downtime on your end can be stressful, but I’m very pleased that this work means better performance across the platform. Thanks for your patience there.
Lastly, we launched a full redesign of our Showcase! It’s now a hub for customer stories and includes app gallery entries, podcast episodes, and case studies. It’s much more interactive, has better filtering, and gives you access to all types of customer stories. Check it out here: bubble.io/customers,
For a full list of bug fixes and releases, check out our release notes here: bubble.io/release-notes.
What we’re working on
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Expression generation tool: We’re working on an upgrade to how dynamic expressions work in the Agent so that it can support more operators and data sources, as well as higher success rates when it comes to creating and editing expressions. You can expect that update this month.
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Agent response UX improvements: This update will improve how the Agent communicates what it’s doing during edits, including giving you a clearer plan up front and an obvious success state when it’s finished. You’ll also be able to undo and redo Agent actions via the Agent itself, rather than just through the menu bar. Most user interactions with the Agent are edit requests, so this will meaningfully improve your day-to-day building experience when it comes out in the next week or two.
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Agent access for non-AI apps: Now that phase 1 is live, we’re working with several of our agency partners to test the Agent on existing apps. We’re expanding access through April to all agency users. The bigger the app, the more cautious we want to be about making sure the Agent can give you a reliable experience, which is why we’re taking the time to test with a smaller pool of apps before expanding access to all apps.
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Agent compound edits: This update would allow the Agent to make more than one type of change per request, like updating the UI / workflow / and database all at once. This is a major upgrade to the AI Agent experience and is much more in line with what we’re seeing users expect when they ask for larger changes to their app. We’re aiming to release the first version of this update in May.
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Conversational blueprints: We’re currently user testing a more conversational experience before app generation that will help users refine what they want to build before they’re in the editor. That timeline is pending based on the results of that testing, but right now we’re targeting mid-to-late May for that.
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Mobile editing via AI Agent: We’re working to get Agent edit access to mobile apps. The AI will understand mobile app elements from the jump, which should help get you from initial idea to working app faster.
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Mobile plugin editor beta: The team is finalizing some work on a system to detect and handle version conflicts between plugin libraries before opening up the beta more broadly. That said, the plan is to open up the beta to anyone this spring. I’m excited to see what functionality you all will build here to add to mobile!
ICYMI
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Emmanuel’s last monthly AMA covered topics that I know are especially relevant to readers of this post, including the mobile plugin editor and workflow branching. That recap is here. Here’s that RSVP link one more time for next week’s AMA.
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We’ve released several great podcast episodes since my last update!
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Brian Henderson built Wash-Dry-Fold POS, a point of sale system for laundromats that combines Bubble with IRL hardware and is now in all 50 states!
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Sam Rudy is building ProStudioTime, a marketplace to help professional musicians book studio sessions.
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Emmanuel sat down with Matt Graham from Gold Agency partner RapidDev. He’s seen over 400 product launches in his time and shares his biggest lessons.
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New hires
We had a few new hires join the team this month. Welcome to:
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Collin, senior software engineer
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Spencer, sales development representative
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Eva, recruiting coordinator
That’s all for this month!
— Josh and Emmanuel
