Docly: built for AI coding agents—and built for production

AI can write code at remarkable speed. The real bottleneck is everything that happens after the code is written: deployment mechanics, environment setup, authentication, databases, background jobs, and security hardening.

Docly removes that friction. It is a cloud-native, file-based application platform where your app is live the moment you save—so AI coding agents (and humans) can iterate quickly, safely, and with far less “platform glue” than a traditional stack.

Why AI-assisted development needs a different platform

Most teams adopting AI code agents discover the same pattern:

• Code generation is fast.
• Shipping is slow. Environments, dependencies, infra, and configuration become the throttle.
• Iteration gets expensive. Small changes still require big ceremony.

Docly is designed for the opposite: a tight feedback loop where the platform stays out of the way and the application is defined by simple, durable files.

How Docly works (in 60 seconds)

Docly’s mental model is simple: files become an application.

• Frontend lives in /ui/
  Example: /ui/index.html, /ui/app.js, /ui/style.css

• Backend APIs are created by placing JavaScript files in #/API/
  Example: #/API/hello.js becomes /API/hello

• Data is stored as structured JSON documents in normal folders
  Example: /articles/123.json

• Server-only logic and platform features live under # folders (internal-only)
  This keeps backend code and platform configuration out of the browser.

This structure is deliberate: it gives AI code agents a predictable, low-ambiguity target to generate and modify—while keeping your project portable and readable.

Three layers in one: Dev + Ops + Data

Many web solutions are still assembled from separate components (hosting, runtime, database, auth, job scheduler, security configuration, admin tooling). That can be powerful—but it also introduces setup overhead, integration work, and operational complexity.

Docly takes a different approach: it provides the entire platform surface you typically need to go from idea to production-grade web app.

1) Development environment built in

• Work directly with files and code in a browser-based workflow.
• Use a built-in code editor for server-side JavaScript and templates.
• Reuse standard building blocks through a modular package system (installable building blocks you can mix, match, and standardize across projects).

2) Operations environment handled for you

Docly is built to remove deployment friction and reduce operational burden:

• Instant deployment: save files and your app updates immediately.
• Safe delivery workflows: use separate environments to code and test before pushing changes to production.
• Security controls: configure HTTP security headers centrally (for example via #/headers.json).
• Background services: schedule recurring jobs and respond to events using #/Services.json.
• Authentication: enable login where needed without building an entire authentication stack from scratch.

3) Data layer included (JSON database + admin tooling)

Docly’s data layer is a built-in JSON database with schemas, validation, and editors:

• Define structure using schemas.
• Render documents into pages through templates.
• Let colleagues manage content and data in admin tooling instead of building a bespoke back-office UI for every solution.

The result is a platform that supports the full lifecycle: build, deploy, operate, and iterate—without needing to stitch together a “stack of services” just to get a web app running.

What makes Docly especially well-suited for AI coding agents

AI code agents thrive when the environment is:

1. Predictable
2. Convention-driven
3. Fast to validate
4. Hard to break

Docly aligns with those conditions by design.

Predictable conventions = better agent output

Agents can reliably generate:

• a UI in /ui/
• an endpoint in #/API/
• schemas + templates to turn JSON into structured pages

This reduces ambiguity and lowers the human effort required to correct scaffolding, wiring, and file organization.

Tight feedback loops = better quality

When changes are live immediately, you can run a simple loop:

1. Ask the agent to implement a feature
2. Refresh the app and validate behavior
3. Ask the agent to adjust
4. Repeat

This is how you turn AI speed into production-quality progress.

Open standards = less lock-in, more longevity

Docly is built around HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and JSON. That matters because:

• agents can generate and refactor these formats extremely well
• projects remain readable and portable over time
• data stays exportable, versionable, and reusable across environments

Built-in AI assistance (for more than “just code”)

Docly is not only compatible with AI workflows—it is explicitly positioned as an AI-enhanced platform with a built-in AI assistant, intended to support coding, environment setup, and content QA.

Cost and complexity: where Docly moves the needle

When you build a tailored web application, cost is rarely about “coding pages.” It is driven by non-functional requirements and solution complexity:

• security, uptime, performance, privacy (e.g., GDPR)
• data volumes and growth
• roles and access control
• functionality scope and modules
• integrations with other systems

A practical approach is incremental delivery: start simple, validate early, and expand in controlled steps.

Docly supports that approach exceptionally well because it makes iteration cheap: schemas, templates, APIs, and UI can evolve without re-building your infrastructure baseline each time.

Example: a minimal full-stack Docly app a code agent can ship quickly

Goal: A customer-facing “Knowledge Base + Request Form” app.

A code agent can implement it as:

• /ui/ for the customer UI
• schemas to define Article + Request
• templates to render Articles as pages
• #/API/ endpoints for submitting requests and listing articles
• #/headers.json for hardened security headers
• #/Services.json for scheduled tasks (notifications, cleanup, indexing)
• “Require login” for protected areas without writing an authentication subsystem

That is a complete, operable web application—without stitching together separate hosting, database, scheduler, and authentication products.

Ready to explore?

• Developer introduction: https://developers.docly.net/Introduction
• Get started: https://docly.org/get-started
• More about Docly: https://docly.org/about