Banto Studio & AI: v1.0 Beta

We're opening Banto Studio v1.0 beta: a browser-based workspace where you describe a live experience in plain English, preview it with real host and player views, and publish it for your group, with no app installs for anyone in the room.

This post is an honest overview of what works today, what the AI actually changes under the hood, and what we're still building.

What is Banto Studio?

Banto Studio is the creator side of Banto.tv. You start with a proven audience / multiplayer template (trivia, icebreakers, drawing games, word puzzles, and more), then customize it for your topic: onboarding, classroom review, wedding guest game, team retrospective, whatever fits.

Every experience follows the same live pattern:

Host opens a session on a big screen (or shared tab).
Players join on their phones or laptops with a room code.
Everyone participates in real time: answers, votes, guesses, reveals.

Studio is built on the Banto language (.banto files): a small DSL for describing what the host screen and each player phone should show. Under the hood that's serious infrastructure; in Studio you mostly interact through chat, preview, and a guided editor.

How creation works

1. Start with an idea

On Create, describe what you want, or pick a premade prompt from categories like:

Icebreakers
Training
Classroom
Team Building
Events
Social Games
Custom

Examples: Sales training with objection handling, Two truths and a lie, Wedding guest trivia, Anonymous hot takes.

You can also start from a vendor template directly (Trivia Bluff, Zingify, Quickdraw, and others).

2. The AI plans, then implements

When you kick off a new project, Banto AI runs in two phases:

Plan: You'll see a short outline: what the experience will feel like, how rounds flow, and a suggested title. The agent also picks the best template for your prompt (e.g. fill-in-the-blank trivia vs. creative voting vs. draw-and-guess).

Implement: The agent applies changes to your project, validates them, and triggers a build so you can preview immediately.

You'll see status updates in the Studio chat panel, including when files are updated and whether the project compiled cleanly.

3. Preview, refine, publish

Inside Studio you can:

Preview as host or player, including switching game states
Chat with the AI to iterate ("make the questions about space exploration", "use a darker background")
Browse Content and Flow views for a higher-level picture of your experience
Open Advanced mode to edit project files directly (including .banto source and CSS)
Publish when you're ready, then host a live session and share the room code

Published experiences show up under Experiences on your account. You can reopen them in Studio anytime.

What the AI can change today (v1.0 beta)

This is the important part. In beta, the Studio AI is focused on safe, high-impact customization, not rewriting entire games from scratch.

Content & theming (automatic)

The AI can edit:

banto.config.json: Title, description, and themed datasets (questions, prompts, word lists, etc.)
styles.banto.css: Visual theme: colors, backgrounds, fonts (when you ask for look-and-feel changes)

Each template documents the shape of its data. For example:

Trivia Bluff: fill-in-the-blank questions with believable wrong answers
Zingify: creative prompts for write-and-vote rounds
Quickdraw: draw-and-guess word lists
Cluegrid: word grids for team guessing
Letterhive: spelling-bee style rounds
Worddash: five-letter word lists
Crossword Battle: clue-and-grid style content

The AI is instructed to replace themed content wholesale for those datasets, not patch in half-finished fragments.

Game logic & layout (manual for now)

The AI does not edit .banto source files in v1.0 beta. Game flow (lobby behavior, round structure, scoring rules, custom UI blocks) still lives in template source code.

If you need that level of control:

Use Advanced → Files in Studio to edit .banto yourself, or
Use the Banto CLI locally with full language-server support

We're working toward AI-assisted .banto edits, but we're not there yet in beta. We'd rather ship something reliable than let the model break compiles silently.

Questions & documentation

The AI can also answer how-to questions about the Banto language, registry components, and recipes. It searches our docs and template examples before responding. That's useful when you're learning the DSL in Advanced mode.

Built-in templates

Studio ships with seven multiplayer templates:

Trivia Bluff: Fill-in-the-blank bluffing, training quizzes, classroom review
Zingify: Icebreakers, hot takes, creative voting, party games
Quickdraw: Draw-and-guess, energetic social rounds
Cluegrid: Team word games with spymaster / operatives
Letterhive: Word puzzles and spelling challenges
Worddash: Head-to-head five-letter guessing
Crossword Battle: Competitive crossword-style clues

You don't pick blind. The AI recommends a template from your prompt, and you can always start from a specific one on Create.

Studio workspace tour

A few areas worth knowing:

Chat: Talk to Banto AI; see plans, file updates, and build status.
Preview: Live host/player preview wired to the same compile pipeline as production.
Content: Inspect datasets and configuration without diving into raw JSON.
Flow: Visual overview of states in your compiled game.
Advanced (Files & Logs): Full file tree, syntax-aware .banto editing, compile logs.

Projects autosave to your account. Chat history is persisted per project so you can pick up where you left off.

AI usage limits

Studio AI requests are metered so we can keep the service sustainable during beta.

Free

3 requests per day
10 requests per month

Banto Premium

30 requests per day
200 requests per month

A "request" is one plan or implement call (creating a new experience from Create typically uses both). Premium also includes faster creation workflows and early access to new Studio features as we ship them.

Who this is for

Great fit today:

Facilitators who need a polished live session fast without building from zero
L&D and team leads running training quizzes, onboarding games, retros
Teachers doing review games, exit tickets, vocabulary practice
Anyone hosting icebreakers, party games, event trivia

Still a stretch today:

Fully custom game mechanics that require new .banto logic
Experiences that don't map to any existing template shape
"Generate me a brand-new game type": templates are the foundation

Beta expectations

This is a beta. That means:

AI output can be wrong, generic, or off-theme, so review before you go live
Compile failures happen; Studio will surface them, and you can fix files manually or ask the AI to try again
Limits, templates, and AI behavior will evolve quickly
We're actively measuring quality and fixing the highest-impact failure modes

If something breaks, we'd rather hear about it than have you assume it's you.

What's next

On our roadmap:

Higher success rate on themed content (especially for training and classroom prompts)
Richer visual theming controls
AI-assisted .banto edits for bounded changes (lobby copy, round counts, simple flow tweaks)
More templates and premade prompts
Deeper evals so prompt and model changes don't regress quality silently

Try it

Sign in at banto.tv
Go to Create, describe an experience (or pick a premade prompt)
Let Studio build it, preview as host and player, then Publish and host for your group

If you want more requests and early features, check out Banto Premium.

Questions or feedback? Reach us through the app or the community. This beta is as much about learning from you as it is about shipping.

Banto Studio v1.0 beta: generate live sessions, fast.