Frequently asked questions

What exactly happens when I describe a site?

Your brief is first read by a model whose only job is to understand it rather than to write code. It extracts the kind of site you are asking for, who it is aimed at, the sections it will need, the tone of the copy and any constraints you stated explicitly — a colour, a business name, a language, a required page. If something essential is genuinely ambiguous, the agent asks one short question instead of guessing, because guessing wrong costs you a whole build.

That structured understanding is then handed to the generation step, which writes real HTML, CSS and JavaScript file by file rather than pasting a template and swapping the words. You can watch each file appear in the activity panel as it is written. A final review pass reads back what was produced, checks the pieces reference each other correctly, and repairs obvious breakage before the preview is shown to you.

How specific should my prompt be?

More specific is almost always better, but specificity about intent matters far more than specificity about layout. 'A booking page for a two-chair barbershop in Leeds, walk-ins welcome, prices from £18, friendly but not jokey' produces a much better result than 'a nice barbershop website with a hero, three cards and a footer'. The first tells the model what the page has to achieve; the second only describes furniture.

Things worth stating up front: the real business name, the actual prices or services if you have them, the language, and anything that must appear for legal or practical reasons. Things not worth agonising over: section order, exact spacing, precise shades. Those are quick to adjust afterwards, and adjusting is cheaper than rebuilding.

Can I keep editing after the first build?

Yes, and this is how most good sites get made. The first build is a draft you react to. Follow-up instructions are applied to the existing site rather than starting over, so 'make the hero photo full width and move the prices above the gallery' changes those things and leaves everything else alone.

Edits are conversational and cumulative. If a change makes things worse, saying so in plain language is enough — you do not have to describe how to undo it.

What can Black Hole not do?

Black Hole builds front-end websites. It does not build native mobile apps, it does not set up payment processing or logins inside the sites it generates, and it will not invent business facts you did not give it. If you do not supply opening hours, a phone number or a price, the generated page will use placeholder text that you must replace before publishing — we deliberately make those placeholders obvious rather than inventing plausible-looking details.

It is also not a designer with taste you can outsource entirely. It produces a competent, modern, coherent site quickly. Turning competent into distinctive still takes a couple of rounds of you saying what you actually want.

Why do different actions cost different amounts?

Credits track real computation rather than clicks. A conversational reply — asking a question, confirming something, a short clarification — costs nothing, because it is cheap for us and charging for it would make you reluctant to talk to the agent, which makes results worse. An action that changes files costs one credit. Generating a complete site costs three, because it runs the analysis, generation and review passes across many files.

The practical consequence is that you should talk freely and build deliberately. Ask as many questions as you like before committing to a build.

What do I get on the free plan?

Enough to build and publish several real sites and decide whether the tool suits you, without a card. Free accounts use the standard model tier, which is capable and fast. The paid plan adds a larger monthly credit allowance, access to the frontier model tier for harder or more nuanced briefs, and higher priority when the build queue is busy.

Free accounts may also connect their own provider API keys and use those instead of our credits, in which case you pay your provider directly and Black Hole charges you nothing for the generation.

How do I cancel, and what happens to my sites?

Cancel from the settings page at any time; there is no retention call and no cancellation form. You keep access to the paid tier until the end of the period you already paid for, then the account reverts to the free plan.

Cancelling does not delete anything. Your projects, generated files and published sites remain exactly as they are. Only the allowance and the frontier model tier change.

Who owns the site that gets generated?

You do. The output of a build is yours to use commercially, modify, host anywhere and sell to a client. We claim no licence over it beyond what we need to display it to you and, if you choose to publish it, to serve it.

The one thing you should check is third-party material. If you paste in a photograph, a logo or a block of copy, the rights position of that material is unchanged by passing it through Black Hole — you still need the right to use it.

Can I export the code or use my own domain?

Yes to both. Every project can be pushed to a GitHub repository you control, which gives you the complete source with no runtime dependency on Black Hole. Projects can also be deployed to your own hosting account, at which point the site is served from your infrastructure under your domain.

There is no lock-in mechanism and no obfuscated build output. What you see in the file list is what you get.

How long does publishing take?

Seconds. Publishing copies the current version of the project to a public address and makes it live immediately. Republishing after an edit is the same operation, so the usual rhythm is edit, look, publish, repeat.

What do you do with my prompts?

Prompts and generated files are stored against your account so that the project still exists tomorrow and the agent can build on what it wrote yesterday. They are sent to the model provider that performs the generation, because that is inherently how the request is fulfilled. They are not sold, and they are not used as advertising signal.

Deleting a project removes its prompts and files from your account. Deleting your account removes the lot. The privacy policy sets out the retention detail and the legal bases in full.

How is my account protected?

Passwords are checked server-side against a length and complexity policy and against a database of passwords known to have leaked in public breaches, so a password that is already circulating cannot be set. Repeated failed sign-in attempts lock the account temporarily, and repeated attempts from one network are rate limited regardless of which address they target.

Two-factor authentication using an authenticator app is available to every account and takes about a minute to enable. Signing out clears the session and every cached piece of account data in the browser, which matters on shared machines.

Do you show adverts, and what does that mean for my data?

Some pages of the Black Hole marketing site carry advertising. Adverts appear only on public, content pages; the builder, the dashboard and anything behind sign-in carry none. Advertising partners may set cookies subject to the consent choice you make in the banner, and our advertising policy page explains what those cookies do and how to change your mind later.

Your project content and prompts are never shared with advertising partners.