Gadget overview: The full-stack AI development experience
TLDR: Gadget gives you an AI assistant and a development platform with everything you need to start, code, configure, debug, deploy, and scale web apps — all in one place.
Over the last year, AI coding tools have lowered the barrier to building software. Suddenly anyone can spin up an app idea. But turning that idea into something production-ready (and actually secure) takes more work than many new developers realize. It takes infrastructure, security, scalability, and a clear understanding of how all the moving parts fit together.
But here's what most AI coding tools get wrong: they improvise where they should be precise. They generate auth flows that might have security holes. They create database schemas that won't scale. They write infrastructure code that works locally but breaks in production. They help you start, but they can’t carry you to the finish line.
The reality is that some things in software development should never be left to improvisation. They should be built by experienced engineers, battle-tested at scale, and ready to use from day one.
That's exactly what we've built into Gadget. This isn't just another AI assistant that generates code snippets. It's a complete development platform where AI meets industrial-grade infrastructure, secure-by-default systems, and frameworks that have been refined through years of real-world use.
So whether you’re new to Gadget, or you’ve been here from the start, we’re doing a complete walk-through of why a full-stack, single-stack platform is the answer to building with AI.
Let’s dive in.
A full-stack IDE — with AI built in
Gadget is the first AI-assisted IDE and hosting platform that can do it all, with zero handoffs. Model data, code, configure, debug, preview, deploy, and scale — all under one roof.
It’s not just a code editor with AI bolted on. It's a complete development platform where your AI assistant is woven into every layer. Gadget’s assistant inherently understands your data, your code, your infrastructure, and how they all connect and interact.
Unlimited full-stack, hosted environments
Every Gadget project comes with unlimited, instantly cloneable environments.
Need to test a new feature? Clone your entire stack — Postgres database, backend logic, frontend, secrets, environment variables — with a single click. Each environment is completely isolated, with its own URL and data, perfect for testing, staging, or giving each developer their own sandbox.
Easier, faster data modeling
Most developers end up writing the same database setup code repeatedly — migrations, relationships, validations, etc. It's foundational work, but it's also time-consuming work that delays getting to the features that actually differentiate your application.
Gadget lets you build your database schema visually. You get rich field types, relationship mapping, built-in validation, and automatic migration generation, with no SQL required (unless you want it).
On top of that, the AI assistant understands your entire data model. When you ask it to "add support for user teams," it doesn't just generate code — it creates the proper database relationships, sets up the right permissions, adds the necessary UI components, and wires everything together correctly.
A code editor with context-aware AI
Switching between files and trying to remember how your models connect to your routes and components breaks your flow. You end up spending mental energy on navigation instead of problem-solving. Gadget solves this by keeping everything under one roof.
Ask the assistant to write frontend and backend code — or write it yourself, using one integrated environment. Gadget understands all of your app’s data, routes, and logic, so you never need to stitch together multiple tools or repos. You get all the perks of your favorite IDE and more, with intelligent autocompletion, real-time linting, and full awareness of your data models, API routes, and business logic.
Unlike generic AI coding tools, Gadget's assistant knows the difference between your User model and your Customer model. It understands which fields are required, which relationships exist, and how permissions are configured. When you ask it to build features, it generates code that actually works with your existing app structure.
Live previews for real-time development
Local development with HMR handles frontend changes well, but testing full-stack features usually means coordinating local databases, API changes, and mock data. You end up with a development environment that doesn't quite match what users will experience.
Live previews in Gadget give you the complete picture as you code. Frontend changes update instantly like you'd expect, but so do backend changes, database schema updates, and business logic modifications. You're testing with real data in a real environment that's identical to production, so you catch integration issues and edge cases that local development often misses.
And you’re not the only one who can see the latest version. You can share preview URLs instantly with teammates or stakeholders, eliminating the "works on my machine" problem entirely.
And since the AI assistant is completely context aware, it sees what you see. It can help you debug visual issues while you’re in the preview, so when you tell it "The sidebar navigation isn't working properly on mobile,” you get responsive design fixes that actually understand your app's layout.
Built-in background actions and queues
Processing async tasks usually means choosing the right service, configuring workers, handling retries, and setting up monitoring. It's infrastructure work that has little to no impact on your actual users.
Gadget includes Temporal for processing background actions with a complete queueing system — with monitoring tools right out of the box. Actions are automatically queued for reliable processing, with configurable retry logic, dead letter handling, and queue monitoring. Schedule jobs, handle complex workflows, and debug async processes all within the same interface where you write your application code. No separate services to configure or maintain.
The AI assistant understands asynchronous workflows too. Ask it to "send a welcome email series when users sign up," and it'll create the proper background actions, set up email templates, and handle error cases — all following best practices for reliable async processing.
No need to set up separate queue systems or job runners. Gadget includes a fully integrated background job system powered by Temporal. Schedule jobs, retry failures, and debug async workflows all within the same interface.
Testing and debugging tools
Good debugging starts with visibility into what your application is actually doing under the hood. When something breaks, you need to quickly understand what happened, where it happened, and why.
Gadget's built-in API playgrounds let you test GraphQL queries and JavaScript actions instantly without leaving your development environment. The playground understands your current schema, includes authentication automatically, and provides real-time feedback with your actual data.
Logs are filtered by route, webhook, or action so you can trace issues without digging through noise. The Problems drawer surfaces errors and warnings contextually, highlighting issues in the code where they actually occur.
The AI assistant can even help interpret error logs and suggest fixes based on your specific application context. Instead of googling cryptic error messages, you can ask the assistant to explain what went wrong and get solutions tailored to your code.
One-click deploys
Once you’re ready to push to production, all it takes is a single click — or a prompt. Gadget handles everything for you and automatically includes permission checks, performance optimizations, and safe rollout defaults.
Prefer working locally? Use the CLI to sync files, stream logs, and deploy from your own editor.
An AI assistant for your app’s entire stack
Most AI coding assistants have a very limited view into your app. They might understand all the different parts, and they can definitely help you write a function, but they have no idea how that function fits into your broader application, what data it should work with, or how it should handle permissions and security.
You can take the time to share context about your data models, API structure, or business logic, but at the end of the day it will always have a limited understanding of your stack.
Gadget's AI assistant is different. It's baked into the platform and trained on our full-stack framework. So it not only understands how real applications are built, secured, and scaled — it understands everything about your app specifically.
It knows how your models relate to each other, which API endpoints exist, how permissions are configured, and where different types of logic should live. This means you can give high-level prompts like "add a feature where team admins can invite new members" and get a complete implementation: database schema updates, API endpoints with proper permissions, email templates, frontend components, and background jobs — all wired together correctly.
Framework-trained intelligence
Because your app runs on Gadget's structured framework, the assistant understands the relationships between your models, actions, routes, components, permissions, and infrastructure. You don't need to explain where a file should go or how an API call connects to a database—it already knows.
This deep understanding changes how you can interact with the AI. Instead of writing detailed prompts that explain your app's architecture, you can work at a much higher level.
Ask for "user teams with invitation workflows" and the assistant knows to create the team model with proper relationships, set up invitation logic with expiration handling, configure email templates for invites, add permission checks for team admins, and build the frontend components that tie it all together.
Whether you know what to ask for, or you need a bit of guidance, you can rely on Gadget’s AI to guide you through each and every stage of development. It can suggest the right field types for your data, recommend permission structures that scale, and even help you restructure existing features as requirements change.
Because it understands the implications of architectural decisions, it can help you avoid common pitfalls, like creating circular dependencies between models or accidentally exposing sensitive data through your API.
Security and reliability by design
Here's where our approach fundamentally differs from other AI tools: we don't let the AI improvise on critical systems. Authentication, permissions, data validation, and infrastructure are built by experienced engineers and battle-tested at scale. The AI extends these systems rather than recreating them from scratch.
When you ask the assistant to add user authentication, it doesn't generate a custom auth system that might have vulnerabilities. Instead, it configures Gadget's proven auth system — complete with secure password handling, session management, and permission controls that have been audited and refined over years of use in real, business critical production apps.
Generate fully functional features
The assistant doesn't just generate code snippets—it builds complete, connected features. Ask for "a customer support ticket system" and you'll get:
- Proper data models with relationships
- API endpoints with appropriate permissions
- Background jobs for email notifications
- Frontend components that actually work with your data
- Integration with your existing user system
Everything connects because the AI understands your entire application context.
Editable and extensible
Everything the assistant generates is yours to modify and extend. It gives you a working starting point built on solid foundations, with complete control to customize from there. No black boxes, no complicated migrations — just clean, understandable code that follows best practices.
Built-in integrations
Third-party integrations are where most applications become brittle and unreliable. APIs change, authentication breaks, and what started as a simple connection becomes a maintenance nightmare.
With Gadget, integrations with third-party APIs aren't an afterthought — they're core platform features, built and maintained by Gadget under the hood.
Authentication that actually works
Every app needs auth, but most of the time, it's a pain to set up. You need secure login and signup forms, password handling, email verification, password reset flows that don’t allow data leaks, and a bunch of other stuff that's easy to mess up. If you want to offer things like Google SSO, it’s a whole other project just to set that up.
Gadget just gives you all of this out of the box. Complete login and signup pages, password recovery that actually works, Google SSO if you want it, and a proper user management system with roles and permissions. No configuration headaches, and no security holes because you forgot to hash passwords correctly.
The AI assistant doesn't try to reinvent any of these features. When a new feature needs unique user permissions, it builds on top of what's already there. So you're not getting some experimental auth system that might break — you're getting proven, secure foundations that you can customize however you need.
Shopify apps without the headache
Anyone who has built a Shopify app (or given up on it) knows how much work it takes to get OAuth right, and that’s just the beginning. Webhooks need proper handling and retry logic, embedding your app in Shopify's admin requires understanding App Bridge, and if you’re looking to list your app on the Shopify App Store, you need to manage data across thousands of different stores. Plus, Shopify updates their API multiple times a year, which means regular maintenance work.
Gadget handles all of this automatically. You can connect your app in a couple of clicks, and everything is set up. Webhooks are processed reliably with automatic retries and reconciliation to catch anything that gets missed, you get an embedded frontend in the Shopify Admin without you having to understand App Bridge, and multi-tenancy just works, so every store gets its own isolated data without you having to think about it.
Once you launch, the biggest time-saver is the one-click API upgrades. Normally when Shopify releases a new API version, you could be looking at weeks of manual work updating your code, testing everything, and hoping that nothing breaks. With Gadget, we handle all the migration work for you.
The AI assistant makes this even better because it actually understands how Shopify works. Ask it to "send an email to merchants when they get a high-value order" and it doesn't just generate generic code. It sets up the right webhooks, creates proper email templates, handles the multi-store complexity, and implements all the Shopify-specific logic that would normally take hours to research and get right.
OpenAI, BigCommerce, and more
If you want to connect to other tools, we’ve built first-party support for the platforms people actually use. Quickly connect to OpenAI if you want to add AI features to your app. If you’re an agency that has clients outside of the Shopify ecosystem, we’ve partnered with BigCommerce to simplify app development across ecommerce. Developers will be happy to hear it’s easy to set up Sentry for tracking down bugs. And we keep adding more based on what people ask for.
These aren't some third-party plugins you have to wrestle with. They're part of Gadget’s platform. No SDK downloads, no weird configuration files, no API wrappers that break when the service updates their endpoints.
The AI assistant knows how these work too, so it can build features that use multiple services without you having to figure out how they all connect.
Auto-generated API
Every app needs an API — but who wants to spend the time to build one?
With Gadget, you get an auto-generated, auto-documented API that updates as you build. When you add new data models, Gadget automatically updates your API endpoints, along with documentation that includes examples and code snippets. You can immediately see which endpoints exist, what data they return, and how everything connects, without ever needing to write or maintain API docs.
Always up to date
Change how a field works? The API updates automatically. Remove a data model? The endpoints disappear. Everything stays in perfect sync because the API is generated from your actual data structure, not maintained separately.
The AI assistant understands your API completely. When you ask it to build frontend features, it already knows exactly which API calls to make, how to handle loading states, and what to do when things go wrong. No manually writing fetch calls or trying to remember which endpoint does what.
Security and permissions that make sense
Every endpoint comes with built-in permission controls. Set up role-based access, field-level security, and control over who can do what - all through visual tools instead of writing complex authorization code. Whether you're building a SaaS app, internal tools, or customer-facing features, proper access controls are included from day one.
Performance built in
With Gadget, your API includes smart pagination, bulk operations for processing lots of data efficiently, full-text search powered by Elasticsearch, and automatic query optimization. You also get specialized operations like upserts for syncing external data, internal APIs that bypass validation for admin operations, and real-time subscriptions for building interfaces that update instantly.
From backend to frontend
Gadget gives you a frontend with a pre-built React library that's perfectly synced with your API. Use hooks like useFindOne, useCreate, or useAction directly in your components. Everything is fully typed, will handle loading states automatically, and knows exactly how your data is structured — no manual API integration required.
Infrastructure that doesn't break
Every Gadget app runs on the same production setup we use for enterprise clients handling millions of requests. You don't set up servers, configure databases, or worry about scaling. It's already handled.
What you actually get
From the moment you create a project:
Database: PostgreSQL that scales automatically, read replicas for performance, smart indexing that adapts to how you query data, and unlimited storage.
Search and caching: Elasticsearch for instant full-text search across everything, plus Redis for fast caching and session storage.
Background jobs: Temporal for reliable background processing, complex workflows, and scheduled tasks. Built-in retry logic and monitoring so you can see what's happening.
Runtime: Node.js backend that scales automatically, React frontend with optimized builds, and a global CDN so your app loads fast everywhere.
Security and uptime: DDoS protection, automatic security updates, SSL certificates, and 24/7 monitoring by our ops team.
Built to scale
Gadget runs on Kubernetes, which means your apps automatically handle traffic spikes, recover from any hardware issues, and don't have the cold start problems you get with serverless platforms. You get enterprise-level reliability without having to learn how to operate Kubernetes clusters.
Everything is monitored constantly by a team of Gadget infrastructure engineers. Health checks, log collection, performance metrics — it's all handled. When something needs attention, our team fixes it, not yours.
Gadget powers apps that handle critical e-commerce infrastructure, sync millions of records every day, and stay online during major traffic events like Black Friday. The platform is designed by people who've been building scalable systems for decades.
Whether you're making a simple internal tool or a complex SaaS product that needs to handle thousands of users at once, the infrastructure scales automatically. No code changes required.
Works for any type of app
While Gadget is really good at e-commerce apps (especially Shopify integrations), you can build anything: SaaS products, CRM systems, internal dashboards, Discord bots, AI-powered tools, or custom applications for specific industries.
The AI assistant understands different types of applications and can help you build whatever you're thinking of. Customer portals, analytics dashboards, workflow automation - it gets the patterns and can guide you through building them properly.
Ready to build something real?
This is what modern development looks like: AI that understands your entire app, infrastructure that scales automatically, and security built by experts instead of improvised by algorithms.
Gadget isn't just faster scaffolding or another place to deploy your code. It's a complete foundation for building serious software - with AI that actually knows what you're building, infrastructure that's proven at enterprise scale, and integrations that don't break when you need them most.
The best part? Everything is ready from day one. No boilerplate to write, no infrastructure to configure, no brittle integrations to babysit. Just open the editor and start building.
