Building EditOnline: a production image editor in under 3 hours

Building a production image editor typically takes months. Canvas rendering, layer management, tool states, undo history, and real-time collaboration each demand weeks of iteration.

Add authentication, billing gates, marketing pages, and docs, and most teams burn their runway before shipping v1.

EditOnline needed all of it in one sprint.

We ran the Initialize AI script on a fresh StarterApp project. It asked about brand, features, and validation requirements.

Before code shipped, Initialize locked in palette #1F6FEB, hero copy, pricing voice, and tool priorities.

Those answers generated a Rebrand plan for marketing and a Features plan for the editor. Every build step traced back to the original prompt.

• Rebrand plan: rename tasks, metadata, social images, navigation, and four marketing sections.
• Features plan: Fabric.js canvas, toolbar, layer panel, keyboard shortcuts, and billing-gated exports.
• Both included test coverage, docs, and README updates to keep the release production-ready.

• Fabric-powered brush, pencil, pen, text, shape, and selection tools with instant feedback.
• Layer panel lets users reorder, rename, toggle visibility, and navigate with keyboard shortcuts.
• Status bar tracks zoom, pointer mode, and active tool. History scrubber enables quick undo.
• Palette presets match the brand colors and keep exports consistent.

The validation checklist ran lint, typecheck, unit tests, integration tests for auth gating, and a full build with zero manual intervention.

Initialize also checked metadata, README updates, and doc freshness to prevent incomplete releases.

Total human review time stayed under twenty minutes. The agent's built-in context handled the rest.

One refinement prompt asked the agent to gate Export behind the Paid tier while keeping buttons visible for free users.

The agent already understood Autumn's billing helpers from initialization, so it reused existing permission checks and dialog patterns.

It shipped the paywall dialog with a billing link and updated copy and tests in one pass.

No follow-up prompts needed. Initialize gave the agent enough context to handle billing integration on its own.

• A complete marketing site with brand-matched hero, navigation, pricing timeline, and build replay.
• An authenticated canvas editor with multi-layer support, brush/pencil/pen tools, keyboard shortcuts, and undo history.
• Billing integration that gates high-res exports behind paid tiers with upgrade prompts and Stripe checkout.
• Automated validation covering lint, typecheck, unit tests, integration tests, and full build verification.

Manual work accounted for 9% of total effort: copy polish, accessibility refinements, and one icon swap.

Final human review took under fifteen minutes.

The same Initialize script works for SaaS dashboards, marketplace platforms, collaboration tools, and content studios.

Your prompts generate custom plans. The agent builds features, tests, and docs while StarterApp handles auth, billing, security, and deployment.

• Download the exact plans the agent followed: Rebrand and Features implementations with full checklists.
• Watch the 2h 47m build replay to see every prompt, decision, and validation step.
• Start your own project with the same workflow—no prior agent experience required.

Download the Rebrand plan and Features plan to see the full breakdown.