What changed
Netlify’s Agent Runners can now ask you questions before it starts building. Agent Runners is Netlify’s prompt-to-app tool: you describe what you want, and an agent writes the code and publishes it as a live, working site or app. You don’t need to set up a coding environment on your own computer, and there’s no separate step where you have to manually push it online. The new question interface gives you a chance to resolve missing details before the agent builds.
Netlify’s own example is a prompt like “Build a tracker dashboard.” That alone doesn’t say what to track: habits, customer feedback, or something else entirely. With the update, the agent can now pause and ask a handful of questions through what Netlify describes as “an intuitive new UI” before writing any code.
The questions are optional. You can answer the ones you have an opinion on, skip the rest, or skip all of them and let the agent decide on its own, the same way it worked before. You can also add your own context in free text alongside your answers. Once you answer or skip the questions, the agent builds as usual and gives you a live preview link of the finished app to check before you decide to publish it more widely.
Check access in your Netlify account before building a workflow around the feature.
Why it matters
The pitch is fewer wasted iterations. Netlify meters Agent Runners with credits built into your plan, similar to how a phone data plan works: every task the agent does draws down an allowance instead of getting billed separately. Netlify says answering questions can make the first build “substantially sharper.” Fewer corrections may reduce time and credit use, depending on the task.
A build that misses your intent means either living with it or spending more credits on a fix. Resolving an ambiguity before building can avoid an unnecessary rewrite.
This is a small but telling shift in how these tools behave. The feature adds a chance to confirm intent before generating an app. Pausing to ask questions trades a few seconds of upfront friction for a better shot at getting the first build right, which matters more once people are shipping real, credit-metered projects instead of just demos.
Who should care
This is useful when short prompts leave important choices unspecified, or when first builds repeatedly miss your intent. It matters less if you already write detailed, specific prompts, since you’re less likely to trigger many clarifying questions in the first place.
What builders should do next
Answer clarifying questions when they resolve a real ambiguity in what you want built. Skip questions that do not matter to the project, and inspect the preview before publishing.
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