Docs: What is Summer Studio, Summer Board, and Build your own tools

apps/custom-tools.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
+---
+title: "Build your own tools: custom apps and custom UI in Summer Studio"
+sidebarTitle: "Build your own tools"
+description: "Your agent builds custom tools and custom UI for your game inside Summer Studio: a quest maker, an item database, a balance table, a sound picker. Your whole team uses them, live, and your agents can too."
+icon: "wrench"
+"og:image": "https://docs.summerengine.com/images/og/apps-custom-tools.jpg"
+"twitter:image": "https://docs.summerengine.com/images/og/apps-custom-tools.jpg"
+---
+
+Every game is different, and every game ends up needing its own tools. A quest maker for your RPG. An item and loot database. A weapon balance table. A grid to pick the best of three sound effects. A tracker for which levels are done.
+
+In Summer, you do not wait for someone to build those, and you do not glue together spreadsheets. **Your agent builds them for you, inside Summer Studio**, as Summer Apps. You describe the tool; your agent writes it, publishes it, looks at it, and opens it for you. Then your whole team works on it together, all in one place, and your agents can use it too.
+
+Summer is open like that: you can build your own plugins for the engine, and your own tools and UI in Studio.
+
+## Two kinds of custom UI
+
+| | Code app | Layout app |
+|---|---|---|
+| **What it is** | A small web page (HTML, JS, CSS) built with the Summer SDK and the Summer UI kit. | One JSON layout of Summer UI parts that Summer draws. No code runs. |
+| **Best for** | Real tools your team keeps: databases, editors, trackers, dashboards. | Quick decisions: pick a sound, approve art, fill in a short form. |
+| **Examples** | Quest maker, item database, balance table, live-ops calendar. | "Sword swing: pick a sound", "Which logo?" |
+
+Both look like the rest of Studio, in light and dark, on a laptop and a phone. Your agent picks the right kind for the job.
+
+## What a custom tool can do
+
+- **Shared and live.** A tool belongs to your team. Everyone who opens it sees the same data, and every change shows up for everyone at once.
+- **Works on your game.** Tools read and change your Summer assets, make new ones with the generative models, and read your game's analytics. Docking a tool next to your scene in Summer Engine comes with the next Summer Engine update.
+- **An API for your agents.** A tool's data is an API: your agent reads and writes it with no tool open. Ask "add a fire sword to the item database" and it is there.
+- **New tools for your agents.** A tool can give your agents new tools of their own, and send events your agent waits for, such as "the team picked this sound".
+- **Versioned.** Every publish is a new version, and you can go back to any one.
+- **Safe.** Tools run in a sandbox with only the permissions they declare.
+
+## Make one
+
+Ask your agent in plain words. Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and other agents use the Summer MCP; in Studio, **Apps > Build a new app** asks Summer Agent.
+
+<Prompt description="**A quest maker for your game.** Your agent builds it as a Summer App and opens it in your Studio tab.">
+Build us a quest maker as a Summer App: quests with a name, giver, steps,
+rewards and the quests they unlock, a list we can filter by area, and a view
+of the quest chain. Keep the quests in the app's shared data so you can read
+and edit them later. Read apps.guide first, and look at it with
+apps.screenshot before you tell me it is done.
+</Prompt>
+
+<Prompt description="**A quick sound pick.** A layout app for one decision.">
+Make three versions of a sword swing sound and give the team a layout app to
+pick one. When someone picks, tell me which one and use it in the game.
+</Prompt>
+
+Your agent first checks whether Summer already does the job (the asset library, Grow dashboards, the Board). It builds a tool only when the need is real.
+
+## Where your tools live
+
+**Studio > Apps** lists your team's tools: **Pinned**, **Scratch**, **Team apps** and **Archived**. New tools start in Scratch; **Keep** moves one to your team's apps, and **Pin to sidebar** puts it in your Studio sidebar. **Starter apps** adds ready-made ones: Pick one, Asset tracker, Balance table and Live ops.
+
+## Go deeper
+
+- [Build your first app](/apps/build-your-first-app): the walkthrough.
+- [Build with your agent](/apps/build-with-your-agent): the build loop and prompts that work.
+- [Agents and apps](/apps/agents): data, agent tools, events and every `apps.*` operation.
+- [Design kit](/apps/design-kit): the UI kit, layout apps and the design rules.
+- [Apps for game teams](/apps/game-teams/item-and-quest-database): item and quest database, weapon balance table, loot tables, economy and level progress.
+- [Extending Summer Engine](/extending/overview): plugins and native extensions for the engine itself.

art-system/overview.mdx

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 ---
 title: "Game Assets in Summer Studio: Create, Find and Import"
-sidebarTitle: "Overview"
+sidebarTitle: "Game assets"
 description: "Summer Studio makes game assets with AI (image, video, audio, 3D), keeps them in My Assets, and Summer Engine imports any of them into your game."
 icon: "palette"
 "og:image": "https://docs.summerengine.com/images/og/art-system-overview.jpg"

docs.json

@@ -142,6 +142,8 @@
           {
             "group": "Summer Studio",
             "pages": [
+              "studio/overview",
+              "studio/board",
               "art-system/overview",
               "art-system/ai-generation",
               "art-system/gallery",
@@ -153,6 +155,7 @@
             "group": "Summer Apps",
             "pages": [
               "apps/overview",
+              "apps/custom-tools",
               "apps/build-your-first-app",
               "apps/build-with-your-agent",
               "apps/agents",

grow/overview.mdx

@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ icon: "trending-up"
 "twitter:image": "https://docs.summerengine.com/images/og/grow-overview.jpg"
 ---
 
-Summer is the game engine built for AI. You make the game with any agent, and you publish it to Summer Games. **Summer Grow** is the part of Summer Studio for what comes after: publish your game, see how it does, and grow it.
+We want every tool you would ever need, not just to build a game, but to launch it, learn from it and make it successful. **Summer Grow** is that part of [Summer Studio](/studio/overview): publish your game, see how it does, talk with your players, earn from it and grow it. Your agent reads all of it through the Summer MCP, so it can tell you how your game is doing and help make it better.
 
 Open it at [summerengine.com/studio/grow](https://summerengine.com/studio/grow), or click **Grow** in Studio.
 

index.mdx

@@ -19,9 +19,14 @@ Your agent makes images, 3D models, textures, sound effects, music and cutscene
 the frontier generative models, at API cost, plus more than 175,000 free assets. Summer is built on
 core Godot and follows upstream, so you can bring a Godot project and keep building it here. It is
 open: build your own plugins, and let your agent build custom tools for your game, like a quest maker
-or an audio designer, right inside Summer Studio for your whole team.
+or an audio designer, right inside Summer Studio for your whole team. See [Build your own tools](/apps/custom-tools).
 
-**Make it together.** On the **Summer Board** you, your friends and your agents work on one live board.
+**Summer Studio** is everything around the engine, on the web and inside the Summer app. It is where
+all the generative models come together, where the Summer Board is, where your agent builds custom
+tools and UI for your game, and where the Grow pages have every tool you need to publish and grow
+it. See [What is Summer Studio?](/studio/overview).
+
+**Make it together.** On the [**Summer Board**](/studio/board) you, your friends and your agents work on one live board.
 Talk, draw, and your agent jumps in and starts working. Use Summer Agent or bring your own.
 
 **Make it multiplayer.** Every **Summer game** can go online with the **Summer SDK**: Summer runs the servers, matchmaking, parties, saves, leaderboards and store.

llms.txt

@@ -96,6 +96,8 @@
 
 ### Summer Studio
 
+- [What is Summer Studio? Every tool for your game in one place](https://docs.summerengine.com/studio/overview.md): Summer Studio is where the generative models come together, where your team and agents work on the Summer Board, where you build your own tools, and where you publish and grow your game.
+- [Summer Board: make your game together with your team and your agents](https://docs.summerengine.com/studio/board.md): One live board for each game. Talk and draw with your friends, and your agents jump in and start working: the Summer agent, Claude Code, Codex or any agent you bring.
 - [Game Assets in Summer Studio: Create, Find and Import](https://docs.summerengine.com/art-system/overview.md): Summer Studio makes game assets with AI (image, video, audio, 3D), keeps them in My Assets, and Summer Engine imports any of them into your game.
 - [AI Asset Generation for Games in Summer Studio](https://docs.summerengine.com/art-system/ai-generation.md): Generate game images, video, audio and 3D models in Summer Studio, write prompts that work, and have Summer Engine import the results into your game.
 - [Summer Asset Store: Free Game Assets to Browse and Import](https://docs.summerengine.com/art-system/gallery.md): Browse and search free game assets in the Summer Asset Store: 3D models, sprites, 2D art, music, sound effects and animations, ready to import into Summer Engine.
@@ -105,6 +107,7 @@
 ### Summer Apps
 
 - [Summer Apps: team tools your agent builds in Summer Studio](https://docs.summerengine.com/apps/overview.md): Summer Apps are team tools inside Summer Studio that any agent builds through the Summer MCP: shared live data, your assets, game analytics and agent tools.
+- [Build your own tools: custom apps and custom UI in Summer Studio](https://docs.summerengine.com/apps/custom-tools.md): Your agent builds custom tools and custom UI for your game inside Summer Studio: a quest maker, an item database, a balance table, a sound picker. Your whole team uses them, live, and your agents can too.
 - [Build your first Summer App with an AI agent](https://docs.summerengine.com/apps/build-your-first-app.md): Walkthrough: ask your agent for a team tool, and it builds, publishes, checks and opens a Summer App in your Summer Studio tab. Then change it by asking again.
 - [Build a Summer App with your agent: the build loop](https://docs.summerengine.com/apps/build-with-your-agent.md): How an agent builds a Summer App that works the first time: connect the Summer MCP, follow the build loop, avoid three common mistakes, and check it with apps.screenshot.
 - [Summer Apps for agents: data, tools, events and operations](https://docs.summerengine.com/apps/agents.md): How agents use Summer Apps through the Summer MCP: read and write an app's shared data, run its agent tools, wait for its events, and the full apps.* operation list.

scripts/docs-routes.snapshot.json

@@ -45,12 +45,15 @@
     "ai-tools/memory",
     "ai-tools/rag-search",
     "ai-tools/mcp-asset-search",
+    "studio/overview",
+    "studio/board",
     "art-system/overview",
     "art-system/ai-generation",
     "art-system/gallery",
     "art-system/collections",
     "art-system/licensing",
     "apps/overview",
+    "apps/custom-tools",
     "apps/build-your-first-app",
     "apps/build-with-your-agent",
     "apps/agents",

scripts/og/titles.json

@@ -131,5 +131,8 @@
   "knowledge-base/export-mobile": "Mobile export",
   "changelog/overview": "Changelog",
   "security/overview": "Security",
-  "security/privacy-mode": "Privacy mode"
+  "security/privacy-mode": "Privacy mode",
+  "studio/overview": "Summer Studio",
+  "studio/board": "Summer Board",
+  "apps/custom-tools": "Your own tools"
 }

studio/board.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,98 @@
+---
+title: "Summer Board: make your game together with your team and your agents"
+sidebarTitle: "Summer Board"
+description: "One live board for each game. Talk and draw with your friends, and your agents jump in and start working: the Summer agent, Claude Code, Codex or any agent you bring."
+icon: "presentation"
+"og:image": "https://docs.summerengine.com/images/og/studio-board.jpg"
+"twitter:image": "https://docs.summerengine.com/images/og/studio-board.jpg"
+---
+
+We think the way people make games together is about to get a lot more creative and a lot more collaborative. The **Summer Board** is built for that. Every game has one live board. You, your friends and your agents are all on it at the same time. You talk with your friend, you draw on the board, and your agent jumps in and starts working.
+
+Use the Summer agent that lives in Summer Engine, or bring your own: Claude Code, Codex, Hermes or any agent that works with the Summer MCP. Work with your agents alone, or with your whole team.
+
+Open it in Studio: **Board** in the sidebar, at [summerengine.com/studio?tab=board](https://www.summerengine.com/studio?tab=board), or in the Summer app's Studio tab.
+
+## Start a board
+
+An empty board offers five templates, or a blank start:
+
+| Template | What it lays out |
+|---|---|
+| **Game idea** | The hook, the player fantasy, the core loop, references, the look and a one-line pitch. |
+| **Level or scene** | The layout, the mood, key moments, enemies and props, the look and a build list. |
+| **Story and world** | The world, places, factions, characters, the look and a timeline. |
+| **Quest line** | Steps, the twist, people and rewards. |
+| **Progression** | Levels, unlocks, currencies and difficulty. |
+
+A template puts named frames on the board, each with one short question, and asks your agents to fill them in with you. **Start fresh** skips them: just talk and draw.
+
+The board name at the top opens your boards: every game you work on, **New board** and, on a board you were invited to, **Leave board**. A new board is a new private game of yours. Nothing is published.
+
+## Talk and draw
+
+This is the heart of the board. Hold the talk key and speak, draw and point while you talk, then let go. Everything you said and everything you marked goes to the agents as one request, with what you said at each moment and what you pointed at.
+
+- **Hold Ctrl** to talk (or Right Option on a Mac, Right Alt on Windows). Inside the Summer app, Fn works too. Tap the key instead of holding it to keep talking hands-free.
+- Your friends can talk at the same time; their words and marks join the same request.
+- "Make this longer" means the thing you were pointing at when you said it.
+- You see the request arrive, who picks it up, and the answer in the chat.
+- Replay any request from the chat: the words and the drawing play back as they happened.
+
+Your voice is never kept. The board keeps the text and the drawings. In Chrome and Safari, your browser turns speech into text for free; in the Summer app, Summer transcribes it with your credits.
+
+## Your agents on the board
+
+Agents join with one prompt. **Connect an agent** on the board gives you the prompt (and the one command that connects Claude Code, Codex or any MCP agent to Summer). In Summer Engine, the Summer agent joins by itself.
+
+On the board, an agent:
+
+- shows up on the ideas it works on, with a line that says what it is doing right now;
+- puts its results next to the things they belong to: notes, pictures, 3D models, even your game's live scene as a model you can turn around;
+- turns bigger requests into tasks, takes them and finishes them;
+- asks you when it needs a decision. The board shows a count of what **needs you**, and a notice if you turn notices on.
+
+If you ask for something and no agent is on the board, the board tells you to connect one.
+
+Agents act when you ask. Joining a board is not a request: an agent says it is there, then waits for you or for a task. It works through the Summer MCP and never opens the board in a browser unless you ask it to.
+
+## Behind the scenes
+
+Switch from the canvas to **Behind the scenes** to see all the work: every task as a graph or in columns, what each agent is doing, and the game's chat. Every job an agent takes is a task that goes from doing to done.
+
+## On the canvas
+
+- **Notes, titles, pictures, drawings and frames.** Drop in pictures, pick note colours, draw with the pen.
+- **Frames** are named areas: put things in a frame and they move with it. Frames can sit inside frames. **Cmd+G** (Ctrl+G on Windows) puts a frame around what you selected. Deleting a frame deletes what is in it; **Cmd+Z** brings it back.
+- **3D models** show as stills and turn in 3D when you rest the pointer on them.
+- **Copy, cut, paste, duplicate and undo** work as you expect.
+- **Pointers.** Everyone has a bright colour. Say something at your pointer, use the laser pointer, or follow someone's view by picking them in the people list.
+- **Clear the board** removes everything on the canvas. Tasks and the chat stay.
+- On a phone: drag with one finger to move, pinch to zoom, press and hold an item to move it, and hold the talk button to talk.
+
+The **?** on the board opens the guide and every keyboard shortcut.
+
+## Invite your team
+
+**Invite** sends an email with a link. Pick a role:
+
+| Role | On the game |
+|---|---|
+| **Can build** | Edits the game and publishes releases. |
+| **Can view** | Sees the game and its board. |
+| **Admin** | Everything a builder does, and manages people. |
+
+**Copy link** copies the invite link you already sent, and sending to someone with an open invite does not send a second email. Every member can switch between their boards, start new ones and leave a board they were invited to.
+
+## For agents
+
+Agents reach the board with the `board.*` operations:
+
+1. `whoami`: check you are signed in. If not, give the person the one sign-in link and wait.
+2. `games.list`, then `board.join` with a short role name, such as "levels".
+3. `board.read` once for the whole board, then `board.wait` with its cursor for new messages and talk-and-draw requests.
+4. `board.status` at each real step, `board.task` to take and finish tasks, `board.claim` before you edit files, `board.canvas` to put results on the board.
+
+Lay out results so people can read them: one frame per topic, a grid of same-size cards (a title, a one-line pitch, a picture), a short note with the next step, and arrows only for real links. A pick becomes a task.
+
+The `summer-board` skill teaches all of it, and is installed with `npx -y summer-engine@latest setup <agent> --yes`. Every input: [Board operations](/mcp/operations/board).