StackBlitz Bolt vs Emergent (2026)

Connectors run on MCP with eight shipping built in, Notion, Linear, GitHub, Miro, Sentry, Context7, Granola and Jira, authenticated by API key or sign-in, and any tool with a remote MCP server can be added as a custom connector. Each connector's individual actions of read, create, edit and delete can be toggled for granular access control.

First party integrations cover Figma and Google Stitch for design, GitHub for version control with organization access controls, Netlify and built-in Bolt hosting for deployment, Stripe for payments, Supabase and Bolt Database for data, Expo for mobile app store publishing, and Google SSO for authentication, plus a project import path from Lovable.

Sourcebolt.new Connectors announcement and support.bolt.new integrations sectionread 2026-08-31

The build agent wires outside services into each app in two ways. Integrations with a playbook follow a tested setup recipe for services such as Stripe, PayPal, Shopify, Razorpay, Paystack, SendGrid, Resend, Twilio, ElevenLabs and the OpenAI, Anthropic and Google models, and a few bill a small credit fee per run.

Anything else with a public API is coded in against the customer's own key. Teams can also register their own MCP servers under Manage Agents, giving the agent tools to read schemas, run queries, post to Slack or open Jira tickets while it builds. Servers are entered as JSON in the mcpServers format, and each tool list is cached for five minutes.

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A project moves from prompt through to published app, with Code View exposing the generated files for direct editing. Plan Mode separates planning from code generation as an explicit phase. Skills apply reusable rules and workflows during planning or building, and a Prompt Library saves prompts for reuse alongside built-in prompts for common tasks.

Project context can be actively managed to control the context window, chat tools allow selecting UI elements, tagging files and queueing prompts, and backups and version history allow restoring an earlier point. Generation runs across multiple files inside an in-browser Node runtime with package installation and a live dev server.

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Every conversation runs as a long lived Temporal workflow in which the agent reasons, calls a tool, reads the result and repeats, up to 10,000 tool calls per message and four hours of wall clock time. A main agent plans the work and spawns subagents for testing, design, code review and integration setup, which run in parallel workflows and report back.

Three agents set the workflow when a job starts: E-1 builds step by step, E-2 checks that the pieces it builds fit together, and E-3 runs E-1 as a subagent under its own loop for large, open ended goals. Runs end on named stop reasons such as end_turn, handoff, max_iterations and insufficient_credits, and a handoff passes the task to another agent.

Sourcehelp.emergent.sh/how-the-agent-runs-workflow-stop-reasonsread 2026-10-09

Users start work in the chatbox of the web application, with chat tools for selecting UI elements, tagging files and queueing prompts. Projects can start from a blank prompt, uploaded files, a Figma or Google Stitch design, or a team template, or be imported from Lovable, and each of these starts a build by hand. Collaborators can be invited to work on a project in real time. There is no scheduled, recurring, webhook or event driven trigger for starting a build.

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Work reaches the builder when a person sends a message. A builder picks an app type (Full Stack App, Mobile App, Landing Page or Brainstorm), chooses an agent and types a prompt in the web workspace at app.emergent.sh or its mobile web app, and a new job can also start from an imported GitHub repository. In Plan mode the build waits until the plan is approved. On the self serve plans nothing starts a build on a schedule, a webhook or an event, so the agent works only while someone is driving it. The apps it makes can run scheduled jobs of their own once published.

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The customer's design system becomes a stored object Bolt builds from. Customers can add a design system so projects build using the company's UI guidelines and components, view and manage the generated system, start a project so Bolt builds with their real components from the first prompt, and keep the design system in sync when its sources change, with best practices guidance alongside.

The design system, built from the customer's own material, persists between runs. Knowledge is separately a managed object at account, workspace and project scope, with project knowledge set in project settings and shared knowledge held at workspace level. Files and images attach to a project as per-request context, and MCP connectors supply context from external tools and data.

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Each build draws on the job's own material: the whole conversation, the workspace code and files, the database structure, the key names in .env, and files attached to chat such as screenshots, Figma exports, PDFs, CSVs and specs. MCP servers add schemas, documents and live rows from outside systems. Pro raises the context window to one million tokens, long chats are compacted automatically, and a fork starts from an editable summary of the history. Context is gathered for each run from these sources, and the builder keeps no searchable index of a company's wider documents.

Sourcehelp.emergent.sh/a-tour-of-the-workspaceread 2026-10-09

Projects persist and can be viewed, organized and maintained over time. Backups, restore and version history allow returning a project to a previous point and are managed from the chat. Project knowledge, design systems and saved prompts persist as project and workspace configuration. Bolt advises actively managing project context and keeping it small for performance. Customers author Skills and Prompt Library entries, and the agent does not update them. Switching agents manually clears chat history.

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Each job keeps its chat, code and build state across sessions, so a builder can close the workspace and come back, and the agent reads the whole conversation on every turn. Workflow state persists in Temporal, so an interrupted run resumes where it left off, and a job paused at zero credits picks up again once the balance is topped up. Less carries between jobs.

A fork condenses the history into a summary the builder can edit, early details can fade after repeated compaction, and subagents start fresh on every turn. What the agent knows about a builder or team in a new job is whatever sits in the code, the forked summary or the files attached to chat.

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Plan Mode is an optional chat mode in which Bolt plans and answers questions without changing code, ending with quick actions such as Implement this plan that switch to Build Mode. The user chooses whether to use it, and Build Mode applies changes directly with no approval step. Connector actions can each be toggled, team admins control member roles, publishing, integrations and data exports, GitHub organization admins control which repositories Bolt can reach, and generation carries security constraints in its system prompts.

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Plan mode, switched on in the composer, returns a plan card with two buttons, Request changes and Looks good, let's build it, and nothing is built until the builder approves.

Build mode, the default, starts as soon as a prompt is sent, Plan mode is unavailable in Brainstorm and E-3 sessions, and in autonomous runs a feature called Auto-HITL answers the agent's own questions with sensible defaults so the run never pauses.

Spending and release controls sit beside the plan step: a maximum credit cap per prompt that asks before going over, a budget per session, cancel from the chat menu, and a live app that changes only when someone publishes it again.

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Bolt is SOC 2 Type 2 certified and compliant with GDPR and CCPA, with audit reports and policies on a trust profile at trust.bolt.new, AES-256 encryption at rest and TLS 1.2 or higher in transit, continuous scanning and intrusion detection watched by a 24/7 security operations team, and annual independent penetration tests with report summaries on request.

Enterprise and Team customers under an MSA or DPA are excluded from model training. Teams adds team level access management and granular admin controls with user provisioning, and Enterprise adds SSO and audit logs. Team settings restrict roles, publishing, integrations and data exports to admins.

Sourcebolt.new/platform/security, bolt.new/pricing and support.bolt.new team-settingsread 2026-09-29

Projects have four roles. Owners control billing, plan and deletion, Admins manage settings, members, the database and domains, Members chat with the agent and publish, and Viewers, on Enterprise only, see the app and its history.

Business adds single sign on through SAML or OpenID Connect and role based access control, Enterprise adds user groups and workspace wide two factor enforcement, and anyone can review and revoke active sessions. Emergent holds ISO 27001:2022 and SOC 2 Type I, with GDPR alongside them in its trust center, and its DPA sets out technical measures, breach notice within 72 hours and audit reports on written request. Secrets are encrypted at rest and data in transit, and customer personal data is kept out of model training under the DPA.

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Backups, restore and version history let a project be returned to a previous point, managed from the chat. GitHub integration syncs commits automatically and works across branches, providing an external record of changes. Hosting analytics show engagement with a published project, and database logs are available for the generated app's database. Team settings include data exports. There is no agent level run trace or tool call record, and troubleshooting relies on issue specific guidance rather than inspecting a run.

Sourcesupport.bolt.new rollback-backup, git, hosting analytics, database logs, team-settings and llms.txt indexread 2026-08-31

While an app builds, the workspace shows the agent's activity live: each tool call with the arguments passed and the result returned, subagent logs nested under the main agent that expand to show their own calls, the step count for the turn and the credits being spent.

A checkpoint is saved after every agent turn, publish history keeps up to three earlier production images tagged with a timestamp, and Account Settings breaks credit use down by agent runs, publishes and Universal Key calls. Enterprise adds audit logs and credit usage reports with an analytics dashboard. How long the Enterprise audit log keeps entries is unclear.

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BYOK deployment lets a customer run Bolt inside its own AWS or Azure tenant with full infrastructure isolation and no shared compute, meeting HIPAA, FedRAMP and SOC 2 requirements. Development executes client-side in an isolated WebContainer in the browser. Bolt Cloud hosts published projects at bolt.host or a connected domain, Netlify and Expo are alternative targets, GitHub sync exports the full codebase, and the bolt.diy fork runs locally.

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Emergent runs as a hosted service, and customer data is processed and stored in the United States, the EU and India under its DPA. Builders choose the hosting region of a published app themselves, US or EU, in the Resources tab of Manage Publishing, with the EU priced higher. App databases run on MongoDB Atlas in the United States unless moved.

Enterprise deploys apps into the customer's own cloud through a VPC setup and supports a self hosted database, and any published app can move to the customer's own MongoDB by a manual runbook. The build platform and its subprocessors stay where they are whatever region an app uses, and EU only hosting for all data goes through a request to the privacy team.

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A Templates catalog at bolt.new/resources/templates offers working templates filterable by category (websites, apps, portfolio, SaaS, blog, internal tools, editorial, ecommerce, travel, finance, real estate), each named, previewable and opened in Bolt with one click, among them a retail dashboard, a pooled analytics dashboard, a personal finance tracker, a SaaS landing page and dashboard, and a social media posting and analytics platform. Team templates skip repetitive project setup, the Prompt Library supplies built-in prompts, and skills add reusable rules and workflows.

Sourcebolt.new/resources/templates, support.bolt.new team-templates, prompt-library and skillsread 2026-09-29

New jobs start from four app types, Full Stack App, Mobile App, Landing Page and Brainstorm, each on its own stack template (React with FastAPI and MongoDB, Next.js, Python only, or Expo for mobile), and from a choice of three build agents, E-1, E-2 and E-3, which are levels of one builder.

Integrations with a playbook package a tested setup recipe for each supported service, and the build page offers example prompts for websites, mobile apps, dashboards and SaaS tools. On Pro, builders make their own custom agents in a four step wizard covering the system prompt, tools and subagents. There is no gallery of finished apps or ready made agents to clone.

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The customer can pick the model in one of Bolt's three agents. In Bolt Forge the customer selects among open-source models from several makers, GLM 5.3 and GLM 5.3 Flash, Kimi K3 and DeepSeek v4 Pro, with new open models added as released. The Standard and Max agents run on proprietary models with model selection handled behind the scenes.

Forge is included with every individual Pro plan and offered through a $9 Lite plan by waitlist. It is not available on Teams or Enterprise. It is a research preview for a limited period, and Bolt has not said whether it continues after that. The open-source bolt.diy fork supports customer API keys across OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, Gemini and LMStudio.

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Two choices shape a build. The agent dropdown sets the workflow, and a separate model selector picks the LLM that powers it, offered again when a fork opens, so a builder can move to another model when a provider slows down. Pro adds Ultra thinking and Maxx mode, a deeper reasoning toggle that costs significantly more credits.

Model providers in the data path include Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini, xAI and Groq. The Universal LLM Key, which reaches 44 or more models from seven providers on Emergent credits or the customer's own provider keys, serves the apps being built rather than the builder.

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There is no API, SDK or first party MCP server for driving Bolt itself, and the API reference section has been removed from the documentation. Bolt does offer two way GitHub integration that backs up a project and syncs commits across branches with full codebase export, MCP connectors through which Bolt calls out, and the open-source bolt.diy fork maintained by StackBlitz Labs, which customers can modify and run locally.

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Emergent also works as an MCP server for clients such as Claude Desktop or Cursor, with example tools that create an app from a prompt, publish a workspace and fetch build or runtime logs, and personal access tokens with scoped permissions reach an Emergent API. The server's address and full tool list are not given alongside those examples, so how much of the platform outside code can drive is unclear. On paid plans the Universal LLM Key also works as a LiteLLM compatible proxy for calling models from scripts and CI, restricted by IP, and code leaves through Save to GitHub.

Sourcehelp.emergent.sh/mcps-connectorsread 2026-10-09

A project security check finds and fixes security problems in a generated project. A live preview renders the running application during development, backups and restore return a project to an earlier point, and GitHub branch support isolates changes. Dedicated troubleshooting pages cover Bolt issues, preview issues, publish issues, integrations issues and login issues. Token efficiency and context management guidance address build cost and reliability. There is no test generation, regression suite, scoring or evaluation comparing builds.

Sourcesupport.bolt.new security, rollback-backup, troubleshooting section, maximizing-token-efficiency and llms.txt indexread 2026-08-31

Testing sits in the agent's own toolset. A testing subagent, called through a run_tests tool or when a builder asks for it, writes unit, integration and end to end tests for the app, runs them and reports coverage, and when a test fails the agent fixes the code and runs the tests again.

E-2 adds a workflow that proves the services it builds actually work together, a Codex review subagent lints and scans pull requests for security and style, and testing runs include visual regression scans.

Builders can ask for specific checks, such as the checkout flow end to end, results show in chat with what failed and why, and mobile apps get TestFlight and APK test builds on paid plans.

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Bolt executes builds in StackBlitz WebContainers, a Node runtime with filesystem, package manager and dev server running client-side in the browser tab. The live preview renders the application the agent has generated for human inspection. External systems are reached through MCP connectors and API integrations. There is no browser navigation, form filling, screen control or computer use.

Sourcesupport.bolt.new intro-bolt, preview-issues, connect-mcp pages and llms.txt indexread 2026-08-31

Agents can carry out tasks in a hosted web browser run by Browserbase, seeing and typing on pages, including ones the user is signed into, and content viewed or entered there is part of the data the platform processes. Firecrawl fetches web pages as a separate agent tool, and web search costs a small credit fee per query. Inside the app builder, the browser work Emergent describes is the preview server screenshotting the app under construction for the agent to check, so whether the builder drives the hosted browser on outside sites is unclear.

Sourceapp.emergent.sh/privacy-policyread 2026-10-09