Draft and live

A Willo business can have two copies of itself: the live site that visitors see, and a private draft where changes collect until someone publishes them. Whether the draft exists depends on one per-business setting, drafting. Your agent works under the same setting as Willo's chat and the dashboard.

Drafting on

While drafting is on, changes collect on the draft and nothing reaches visitors until someone publishes.

• Site code changes land on the draft branch of the business's code repository. The draft preview on the Site page rebuilds on every saved change.
• Backend changes land on a separate draft backend: database writes, schema changes, SQL and edge function deploys. Rows written there are scratch data for testing.
• Reads default to the draft too: file reads come from the draft branch, and backend reads come from the draft backend once it exists.

Every backend result carries a line such as [Backend: draft] or [Backend: live] naming the copy that answered. Backend reads also take target: "live" to read what is published right now, even mid-draft.

What stays live while drafting

Some things have no draft copy. A change to them takes effect on the live business at once, drafting or not:

• Member accounts and login email. Accounts created on the draft backend are throwaway test users.
• Scheduled backend jobs and storage buckets.
• Redirects. Setting or removing one changes the live site straight away.
• CMS publishing. willo_content_write writes a draft content item, but willo_content_publish changes what the live site shows.

Most of these stop for a person's approval, and the card says the change is live. Each tool's reference page says when.

Publishing

Publishing ships everything on the draft together: every site change and every backend change, whoever made it. SQL that a person approved on the draft is replayed on the live backend, and the publish card lists it.

There are two ways to publish:

• Someone clicks Publish on the Site page.
• The agent calls willo_publish, which always raises an approval card. After the person approves, the agent calls it again to start the publish.

A publish takes a few minutes, and willo_status shows when it is live. It has no one-click undo. Discard on the Site page throws the draft away instead.

Drafting off

With drafting off there is no draft and no Publish step. Every file change lands on the main branch and the live site rebuilds at once, usually within a few minutes. Backend changes apply to the live backend. The agent can tell which mode it is in from willo_status, and every write result says where it landed.

Turning drafting on needs a paid plan. Turning it off needs a clean slate: publish or discard the open draft first. Changing the setting is the owner's call, made on the dashboard or in Willo's chat.

Which copy am I looking at?

Related: Approvals, Your first change.