Build your first site

This guide takes you from an empty project to a site you can export. Qanvas builds marketing and landing sites. Authenticated apps, databases and user accounts are out of scope.

1. Create a project

On first launch Qanvas creates an Untitled Project for you. To start another one, open the project switcher in the header and choose New project..., give it a Project name, and select Create project.

A new project starts as a blank slate: an empty Home page plus /terms and /privacy pages.

2. Add your AI key

Open Settings → AI Engine and save a key for Gemini, Claude or OpenAI. See Add your AI key.

3. Define the strategy in Blueprint

Qanvas opens in Blueprint. Tell the AI what you are building: the product, the audience, their main pain point, and what the site should achieve. If you would rather start from an example, select one of the Starter archetypes.

As you confirm answers, the AI fills in your site brief and writes two living specifications:

• Product Requirements (PRD): your product intent.
• Technical Design (TDD): your technical intent.

They are plain Markdown files you can read, edit and hand to a human team. The AI builds pages only once the five core parts of the brief are confirmed: site name, target audience, primary pain point, value proposition and conversion goal. See Blueprint.

4. Generate the site

When the brief is complete, ask the AI to build the site. It plans the pages and composes each one from Qanvas blocks, then shows the result on the artboard in Design. You can also open an empty page and select Generate Page with AI.

The AI's changes go into your unsaved draft. Review them, then select Save.

5. Refine it in Design

• Pick a theme, colours and typography in the ribbon above the artboard. See Themes, colours and typography.
• Add, reorder and remove pages and blocks in the page workbench. See Pages and Blocks and the Inspector.
• Click any block on the artboard to edit its content and layout in the Inspector.
• Keep talking to the AI at any point. You and the AI edit the same draft.

6. Set up search and sharing

In Settings, add your Public site URL, a favicon, and a social share image, and review your page titles and descriptions. See Project settings and SEO and social sharing.

7. Export

Open Export, check that the site is ready, and select Download ZIP. See Export and deploy.

Guardrails

The AI works inside enforced limits instead of free-writing code:

• Every edit is checked against the block's schema and rejected before anything is saved if it is invalid.
• Styling comes only from registered design tokens and recipes, never inline CSS or hardcoded colours.
• Saves are atomic and refuse to overwrite a file changed elsewhere.