> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.avocadostudio.dev/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# A tour of the editor

> What is on screen when you open Avocado Studio, what each control does, and the one button that makes the page clickable.

This is the page for the person who *uses* Avocado Studio rather than the person
who installed it. No environment variables, no code. If your site is already
wired up and someone has sent you a link to the editor, start here.

The editor is one screen with three regions: a **header** across the top, a
**panel** on one side, and a **live preview** of your real site filling the
rest. The preview is your actual page — the same components, the same styles,
the same content — not a picture of it.

## The header

| Control             | What it does                                                                                                         |
| ------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **All sites**       | Back to the site list, if you have more than one                                                                     |
| **Page**            | Switch which page you are editing. Every page the site declares is in here                                           |
| **Language**        | On a multilingual site, switch which language version you are editing                                                |
| **Site settings**   | Name, logo, hosting, media, and the [editorial brief](/editing/brief)                                                |
| **Pull from site**  | Re-read the published content from the site, discarding nothing — see [pages and drafts](/editing/pages-and-drafts)  |
| **Site health**     | Run [checks](/features/site-health) over the site and list what is wrong                                             |
| **Version history** | Every change, in order, with a way back — see [review and undo](/editing/review-and-undo)                            |
| **Publish**         | Push your draft to the live site. It shows a count of unpublished changes first — see [publishing](/editing/publish) |

Two badges appear in the header only when something is off, and both are worth
knowing by sight:

* **Limited** — the site is not telling the editor what its blocks are, so you
  get a read-only preview or text-only edits. That is an integration problem;
  send it to whoever wired the site up, along with
  [coverage checks](/integration/coverage).
* **Add an API key** — chat is running without a model behind it. Simple,
  literal edits still work; anything phrased your own way will ask for a key.
  Also a job for whoever set the site up.

## The panel

Two tabs: **Chat** and **Properties**.

**Chat** is the main surface. You describe a change, it happens. The composer at
the bottom says *Ask anything*, and around it sit four controls:

* **Select an element** — the cursor button. This is the important one; see below.
* **Attach file** — images and PDFs. Useful for *"use the photo attached"* or
  *"take the copy from this PDF"*. See [chat attachments](/features/chat-attachments).
* **Start voice input** — dictate instead of typing, where a key supports it.
* **Send**, which becomes **Stop generation** while a change is being made.

**Properties** is the other way to edit. With a block selected it lists that
block's real fields — text, rich text, images, links, list items, SEO title and
description — and writes real values as you type. No model is involved, so it
costs nothing and never surprises you. Use chat for *"rewrite this section to
sound warmer"*; use the panel for *"this price is 49, not 47"*.

## Click-to-select is off until you turn it on

The single thing most worth knowing about this editor: **clicking the preview
does nothing until you switch the picker on.** Press the cursor button in the
composer — its tooltip reads **Select an element** — and then clicking a
heading, an image or a card highlights that block and tells the chat what you
mean. Escape turns it back off.

It defaults to off on purpose. The preview is a live site, so links, tabs and
carousels have to keep working while you read; a picker that swallowed every
click would make the page impossible to browse. But it does mean a perfectly
healthy editor looks inert on first contact.

With something selected, the composer shows **Editing: *block***, and your next
sentence is scoped to it. *"Make this shorter"* is unambiguous once the editor
knows what *this* is.

## What happens when you send a message

<Steps>
  <Step title="It thinks, visibly">
    A thinking indicator appears and then collapses into **Thought for \_n\_s**,
    which you can expand if you want to see the reasoning.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Changes stream into the preview">
    Operations apply to the page as they arrive, so you watch the page change
    rather than waiting for a result.
  </Step>

  <Step title="It tells you what it did">
    A readable summary — *Applied to your draft* — with the affected block
    named.
  </Step>

  <Step title="You keep it or you don't">
    **Undo** sits on the message that produced the change, and a global undo and
    redo sit above the composer (Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y). Undo is recorded on the
    server, not a browser trick, so it survives a reload.
  </Step>
</Steps>

Anything destructive — deleting a page, removing a block — does not apply and
then offer an undo. It stops and asks, with **Apply changes** and **Discard**
buttons and a description of what it is about to do.

## Nothing you do here touches the code

Every edit is one of a fixed set of typed operations against your content. There
is no operation for "change a file", so no sentence you type — however it is
phrased, however confident the model is — can alter a component, a route or a
dependency. The boundary is the shape of the system, not a rule someone
remembered to apply.

The practical version: **you cannot break the website from this screen.** The
worst you can do is publish something you did not mean to, and
[version history](/editing/review-and-undo) undoes that too.

## Where to go next

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Writing prompts that work" icon="wand-magic-sparkles" href="/editing/prompts">
    What to say, what not to bother saying, and which requests cost real money.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Pages and drafts" icon="files" href="/editing/pages-and-drafts">
    Where your unpublished work lives, and why the live site looks unchanged.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Review, undo and versions" icon="clock-rotate-left" href="/editing/review-and-undo">
    Every way back: undo, revert, version history, and discarding one change from last week.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Publishing" icon="rocket" href="/editing/publish">
    The review dialog, publishing only some pages, and how to tell it worked.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>
