Stately

Stately is a comprehensive platform designed to help development teams build, understand, and deploy complex application logic with clarity and intelligence. At its core, Stately utilizes the power of state machines and statecharts, a proven method for modeling system behavior. It provides a visual, collaborative environment where ideas can be transformed into robust diagrams and executable code in minutes, serving as a single source of truth for frontend user flows and backend workflows.

The platform is built upon the popular open-source library XState, created by Stately's founder. This foundation ensures that the visual diagrams are not just static drawings but are fully executable, testable, and can be directly integrated into any JavaScript or TypeScript application. Stately aims to break down silos between designers, product managers, and developers by providing a common visual language that everyone can understand and contribute to.

How to use Stately

Using Stately involves a seamless workflow that integrates design, development, and deployment:

1. Design & Visualize: Start by using the intuitive drag-and-drop visual editor to map out your application logic. You create states (the different modes of your app) and define transitions (the events that cause a change from one state to another).
2. Leverage AI Assistance: Enhance your workflow with AI. You can generate entire logic flows from a simple prompt, ask the AI to suggest edge cases you might have missed, or even have it write the corresponding code for specific behaviors.
3. Prototype & Simulate: Test your logic without writing a single line of code. The built-in simulator allows you to interact with your state machine, ensuring it behaves as expected. You can even instantly generate a prototype React app from your diagram to get early feedback.
4. Integrate with Design Tools: Connect your logic to your UI designs by embedding Figma frames directly into states. This keeps your mockups and logic in sync and provides context for the entire team.
5. Generate & Sync Code: Once the logic is finalized, export it as clean JavaScript or TypeScript code using XState. With the VS Code extension, Stately offers bidirectional updates, meaning changes in your code are reflected in the diagram, and vice-versa.
6. Test Robustly: Automatically generate test paths and code to ensure your application has robust test coverage, keeping it up-to-date as the logic evolves.
7. Deploy with Stately Sky: For a complete solution, deploy your logic as a real-time backend with a single click using Stately Sky. This logic-as-a-service platform handles state management in the cloud, perfect for multiplayer apps, long-running workflows, and more.

Core Features of Stately

• Visual State Machine & Statechart Editor: An intuitive drag-and-drop interface for modeling complex logic.
• AI-Powered Logic Generation: Use AI to scaffold flows, discover edge cases, and generate code from natural language prompts.
• Bidirectional Code & Diagram Sync: Keep your visual models and codebase perfectly synchronized with the VS Code extension.
• Executable Diagrams: All diagrams are powered by the robust XState library, making them directly usable in production.
• One-Click React App Generation: Instantly create a functional React app from your logic diagrams to jumpstart development.
• Automated Test Generation: Automatically create comprehensive tests to ensure logic is robust and bug-free.
• Stately Sky Deployment: Deploy your logic as a scalable, real-time, logic-as-a-service backend.
• Figma Integration: Embed Figma designs into states to visually connect logic with UI mockups.
• Team Collaboration & Version History: Work together in real-time, leave comments, and track changes with version history.
• Living Documentation: Diagrams serve as always-up-to-date documentation, eliminating overhead and keeping the team aligned.

Use Cases for Stately

Stately is versatile and can be applied to a wide range of scenarios:

• Complex Frontend UI: Managing state for intricate user interfaces like multi-step wizards, payment forms, and interactive dashboards.
• Backend Workflows: Orchestrating long-running, asynchronous processes such as user onboarding, data processing pipelines, or inventory management systems.
• Multiplayer & Real-Time Applications: Building collaborative tools like whiteboards, document editors, or games where shared state is critical.
• Rapid Prototyping: Quickly building and iterating on interactive prototypes to validate ideas with stakeholders before committing to code.
• System Design & Documentation: Using diagrams as the definitive source of truth to explain business logic to both technical and non-technical team members.

Advantages of Stately

Stately offers significant advantages over traditional development approaches:

• Clarity and Communication: The visual nature of statecharts makes complex logic easy for everyone on the team to understand and discuss.
• Reduced Complexity: It provides a structured, predictable way to manage state, preventing bugs and making code easier to maintain.
• Increased Productivity: AI assistance, code generation, and powerful integrations dramatically speed up the development lifecycle.
• Enhanced Code Quality: Deterministic logic and automated test generation lead to more robust, reliable, and bug-free applications.
• No Vendor Lock-In: Built on the open-source XState library, you can always export your code and logic without being tied to the platform.
• Single Source of Truth: Ensures that design, code, and documentation are always aligned, preventing miscommunication and rework.

Pricing and Plans

Stately offers a range of plans to suit different needs:

• Community (Free): Ideal for individuals and open-source projects. Includes unlimited public projects, state machine simulation, and 3 AI generations per month.
• Professional ($39/month or $33/month annually): For individual professionals. Includes everything in Community, plus private projects, 1,000 AI generations/month, Stately Sky deployment, GitHub Sync, and priority support.
• Team ($199/month or $167/month annually): Designed for collaboration. Includes all Pro features for up to 10 team members, shared projects, and admin controls.
• Enterprise (Custom Pricing): For large organizations with specific needs. Includes all Team features plus SSO, audit logs, flexible hosting, dedicated support, and custom integrations.