Back

AI Extension Builder: everything you asked at our Reddit AMA

on 

We hosted a live AMA on r/GoodBarber, answering your questions about the AI Extension Builder beta — how to prompt it, what it can pull from your CMS, where its limits are, and the big thing coming next: a persistent data layer. Here's the recap.

Start with a sharp first prompt

Last week we ran an AMA on r/GoodBarber, focused on the AI Extension Builder — the beta feature that turns a plain-language description into a real, integrated section of your app. Better still, the developers who actually built the feature were in the thread, answering directly. The questions were excellent: specific, hands-on, and often from people who'd already built something. Here's what came out of it.

A recurring discovery from people testing the builder: more iterations don't automatically mean a better result. Past a point, changes get less relevant — and starting fresh with a clearer prompt often beats endlessly steering an existing one.

Our take: iteration works best when you're refining the original intent. When each round changes the direction of the project, it's usually more productive to start over. The quality of that first prompt has an outsized impact — the clearer you are about what you want to build, the expected functionality, and the user experience, the better the output.

Pull your CMS content into a section

One of the most common questions: can a generated section display content from my CMS? Yes — that's exactly what it's made for, and you don't need to do anything technical. Describe what you want and reference the section to pull from:

"Show the content of my [Section Name] as a two-column list."

The builder connects to that section's CMS content and generates the layout. From there you refine conversationally — "make the cards bigger," "add a fade-in animation," "show the publication date," or "turn it into a horizontal carousel." The content stays live as you publish.

Put a generated section on your homepage

Several people asked about reusing a generated section as a homepage widget. The honest answer: it's likely some setups will work, but a homepage widget and a full section are two different execution contexts that aren't covered identically yet — so we can't promise the same behavior everywhere. It's on the medium-term roadmap.

That said, one member didn't wait: they generated a section showing the date, time, and rotating background photos of Madrid, pasted the code into a homepage widget — and it worked. Exactly the kind of experimentation the beta is for.

Build multi-page experiences

A member who'd built a full social app with the custom-code section asked whether a single AI Builder section could span multiple pages — a list, an article detail, a comments page. It's a direction we find genuinely interesting and are actively thinking about.

In the meantime, many of these flows already work by creating several AI Builder sections and linking them together — less seamless than one generated flow, but it covers real use cases today.

What it builds vs. what it manages

The sharpest limits-question came from a merchant who wanted configurable products — think an ingredient checkbox where each selection changes the price. Here we were direct: the AI Extension Builder creates new sections; it doesn't rebuild the core store, and it can't invent product capabilities the platform doesn't already have.

For managing what already exists — products, variants, collections, orders — that's the MCP server, a separate and complementary tool. It's essentially a conversational interface to GoodBarber: you operate your project with your preferred AI client (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor…) instead of the back office.

Important nuance from the thread: the MCP server exposes existing capabilities through conversation; it doesn't add new ones. So if dynamic-pricing ingredient products aren't in the product today, MCP can't conjure them either.

Push notifications and backend actions

Can the Builder send a push to a specific user about an assigned task? Not from the Builder itself — that's front-end section creation. But it's very doable through the MCP server, which offers far more advanced push targeting than the standard back office, down to a single user.

We covered exactly this in a recent article: Create push notifications with AI via the GoodBarber MCP server.

The big one: a persistent data layer with Supabase

Several questions circled the same need — a social feed, a wall, a content layer users can write to from inside the app. The answer to all of them is the same upcoming capability: Supabase integration.

In an upcoming release, the AI Builder will detect when your app needs a database and suggest connecting a Supabase project. You sign in to your Supabase account, and the Builder handles the rest — creating the database structure, connecting it to your app, and using it as the app's data layer.

That opens the door to exactly the dynamic, data-driven experiences people described: social feeds, walls, and more. We're even exploring Edge functions, with encouraging early results. Examples will follow as soon as it ships.

Also on the roadmap

Two more asks worth surfacing. First, SEO depth — structured metadata for articles, Google indexing API integration, AI-assisted SEO across the site and CMS. We agree there's a lot to do here; it's an active internal conversation (and honestly could fill its own AMA).

Second, account security — 2FA and passkeys for admin login. It's been on our list, and your raising it is a useful reminder to keep it in focus.

The AI Extension Builder is free for Content and eCommerce apps: search for the "Create with AI" section in your back office, describe something, and watch it appear. The AMA thread on r/GoodBarber is still open — bring your questions and show us what you've built.

And this was just the first one. We'll be hosting more AMAs on different topics, each time with the people who build the product. Follow r/GoodBarber so you don't miss the next live conversation with the team.