developer-sandbox

Design interactive playgrounds that let developers experience your product without commitment and convert them into users.

What This Skill Covers

Playground Design: Instant gratification, progressive complexity
Pre-Populated Examples: Choosing examples that convert
Sharing and Embedding: Shareable URLs and embeddable widgets
Gating Decisions: When to require signup vs. keep open
Conversion Optimization: Turning playground users into signups
Architecture: Client-side vs. server-side playgrounds

When to Use This Skill

Building a new developer playground
Optimizing existing playground conversion
Deciding what to gate vs. ungate
Creating embeddable examples for documentation
Designing the evaluation experience for your API

Key Principle

A great playground removes uncertainty. Developers should be able to validate that your product solves their problem before investing in setup or signup.

Playground Levels

Level	Experience	Goal
One-Click Demo	Click button, see result	Prove it works
Editable Input	Change input, see output	Build curiosity
Full API Access	Write code, call API	Demonstrate power
Full Playground	Build mini-app	Enable evaluation

Quick Wins

Pre-load a working example (not an empty editor)
Let users run examples without signup
Add "Copy as cURL" button for every example
Show real API responses (not mocked data)
Create shareable playground URLs

api-onboarding - Playground as onboarding tool
docs-as-marketing - Interactive examples in docs
sdk-dx - SDK that works in playground context

README.md