What the Blueprint shows
The Blueprint tab draws your app as a map. Each card is a part of your app, and the lines show how they connect:
- The website (and the phone app, if you have one): what people see and use.
- The server: the part that does the work behind the scenes and keeps information safe.
- Sign-in: how people get into their accounts.
- The database: where your app keeps its information, like products, bookings or members.
- App Operations: what keeps your app running and growing after launch. See App Operations.
- Folders: the folders of your project, which you can open to see what's inside.
Each kind of part has its own colour, so the map reads at a glance.
You don't need to understand code to read it. It's the same picture a developer would draw on a whiteboard to explain your app.
While Piye builds
During a build, the Blueprint shows Piye's progress step by step: planning the screens, modelling your data, setting up sign-in and the database, designing the look, writing the screens ("writing 3 of 9 screens"), making the live preview, checking it works, and fixing what the check found.
Move around
- Drag the background to move around, and use the zoom buttons (or your trackpad) to zoom.
- Fit everything brings the whole map into view.
- The minimap in the corner shows where you are in a big app; collapse it if you don't need it.
- Re-read the project and organize redraws the map from your project's current files, for example after a developer changed it.
Look inside a part
Click a card to open its inspector on the side: what that part contains and what you can change there. For the website, that's its theme and pages; for the server, its settings, data, sign-in and routes. See The inspectors.
The Blueprint and your files
The map is drawn from your real project. Its layout is saved in the project's .piye folder, so it opens the same way next time, and a developer you work with sees the same structure in their tools.
When you invite someone with Handoff, Piye includes a picture of the Blueprint in the brief, so they understand your app's structure at a glance.