The world's best AI website builder. 10 years in the making.
We set out to build the world's best AI website builder. Not another template tool. Not another code generator. A complete AI agent that thinks like a senior designer - asks questions, plans your site structure, builds page by page, generates images, logos, and icons. Paste any website URL - AI redesigns it in 2 minutes, keeping your content. Visual editor. Voice input in any language. Update from your phone. One-click publish with hosting and custom domain. 10 years. 1.1M users. 26M+ projects.
Hi HN,
I've been building Playcode since 2016. Started as a JavaScript playground - think CodePen/JSFiddle but with a real bundler, NPM packages, and live preview. Over time it grew to 1.1M registered users and 26M projects.
In March 2026, we pivoted. Our data showed that AI website builder users converted at 10x the rate of playground users. The paying customers weren't developers - they were entrepreneurs, small business owners, freelancers.
So we rebuilt the entire frontend experience around AI. You describe your business, AI asks clarifying questions, creates a sitemap, then builds pages one by one. It generates images, logos, icons. You can paste an old website URL and it redesigns it with modern code. Visual editor for direct changes. One-click publish with hosting included.
Tech stack: Vue 3, NestJS, PostgreSQL, ClickHouse for analytics, best available AI (LLM) providers (Anthropic, Gemini, OpenAI, Grok) - AI picks the best model per task).
Revenue doubled in the first month after the pivot.
What I learned: sometimes your best product isn't the one you set out to build. It's the one your data points you toward.
Try it: https://playcode.io/ai-website-b...
Happy to answer questions about the tech, the pivot decision, or the business.
Ruslan Ianberdin