Tutorial 1: Design Mode — From Idea to Production
What you’ll build: A fully planned, architecturally designed, and actively developed software project — entirely driven by conversation with AI agents.
Time to complete: 20–30 minutes for the design phases; coding runs in the background.
Prerequisites: An Ileen account with a credit balance. See Quick Start if you haven’t signed up yet.
Overview
Design Mode guides new projects through four sequential agents. Each one unlocks when the previous stage is complete.
| Agent | What it does |
|---|---|
| 🏛️ AI Architect | Gathers requirements via conversation and generates an architecture plan |
| ⚙️ Tech Leader | Designs the system architecture, tech stack, and milestone roadmap |
| 👥 Team Leader | Breaks each milestone into granular development tasks |
| 💻 Development | Sets up Git repos and runs autonomous coding agents |
Use the interactive demo below to explore each stage before you try it in the app.
Step 1 — Create a new project
- Open ileen.hypaz.com and sign in.
- In the left sidebar, click the project selector dropdown → New project.
- Fill in the modal:
- Project name — a short, memorable name (e.g. E-commerce Platform).
- Describe your project — write 2–5 sentences covering what you want to build, who will use it, and any known constraints. The more context you give, the better the output.
- Attach files (optional) — drag in wireframes, existing API specs, competitor screenshots, or any reference that helps the AI understand your vision.
- Click Create Project. Ileen analyses your description and creates the project workspace.
Step 2 — Chat with the AI Architect
The AI Architect is a conversational agent that builds a precise picture of your requirements before generating any documents.
- You’ll see the Chat panel on the left and a live Project Summary panel on the right.
- Answer the Architect’s clarifying questions. Common topics:
- User types and personas
- Expected scale (users, requests, data volume)
- Integrations with third-party services
- Security and compliance requirements
- Technology preferences or constraints
- Watch the Project Summary panel update in real time as the Architect extracts requirements from your conversation.
- You can also edit a past message by hovering over it and clicking the pencil icon — useful if you want to change direction without starting over.
Step 3 — Generate the architecture plan
When requirements feel complete, generate the formal Architecture Plan document.
- Click Generate Plan in the chat panel toolbar.
- A progress bar appears — plan generation takes approximately 3 minutes.
- The Plan Viewer opens automatically. It includes:
- Auto-generated table of contents with collapsible sections
- Executive summary, system architecture, database schema, API design, security model, deployment architecture, and a milestone roadmap
- Download the plan as Markdown or PDF using the buttons in the top-right of the viewer.
Step 4 — Review with the Tech Leader
The Tech Leader agent transforms your architecture plan into concrete technical decisions.
- Click Tech Leader in the agent pipeline (it unlocks after plan generation).
- Review the deliverables:
- Component architecture with Mermaid diagrams
- Final tech stack selection
- Repository structure
- Data flow and security design
- Milestones — a phased roadmap with durations and dependencies
- Use the chat panel to iterate: “Change the backend from FastAPI to Django”, “Split the frontend into two separate repos”, “Add a mobile app milestone”.
- If you want to regenerate milestones entirely after a major change, click Regenerate milestones.
Step 5 — Break tasks with the Team Leader
The Team Leader agent produces the granular task list that coding agents will execute.
- Click Team Leader in the agent pipeline.
- Review each milestone’s task breakdown. Each task includes:
- Title and description
- Acceptance criteria
- Dependencies on other tasks
- Target repository
- Tasks are the direct input to the Development agent — verify they’re specific and well-scoped before proceeding.
Step 6 — Configure Git and start development
- Click Development in the agent pipeline.
- The Developer Setup screen asks for Git credentials for each repository defined in the Tech Leader stage:
- Repository URL (HTTPS)
- Personal Access Token (needs read/write access)
- Toggle Share token across all repos if you’re using one account for everything
- Target branch (defaults to
main)
- Repositories must be empty — Ileen pushes the initial commit and structure.
- Click Save & Start Development.
Step 7 — Monitor the Development Dashboard
Once development starts, the Development Dashboard shows everything in real time.
- Summary tiles — total tasks: completed / running / failed / todo
- Elapsed time — total and average per task
- Milestone tree — expand any milestone to see individual task statuses and timers
- Lessons Learned — per-repo notes added by the coder agent; you can add, edit, or delete entries inline
- The dashboard auto-refreshes every 15 seconds while jobs are active
If a task fails, it’s shown with a ✗ status. You can investigate the error in the task detail and click Resume Development to retry.
What’s next?
- Read the guide on Writing an effective project brief to get better results from the Architect.
- Learn how to review and iterate on the architecture plan.
- Once your project is live, use Deploy Mode to ship it to the cloud.