Preview.Lab

What's new

Preview Lab is the engagement platform for AI: the easy way for Claude, Codex or any agent to make links people tap. The most common use is promotions: discounts, launches and reminders that show as a big, designed card when texted, and can move. The second is business content: decks and proposals in one library, one link per person, and which pages they read. Every link shows its numbers.

Updated November 9, 2026. A plain-text guide for AI assistants is at /llms.txt.

Try it without signing in

• Share link (send this): https://getpreviewlab.com/l/4yg7eHYp
• The viewer it opens: https://getpreviewlab.com/d/nhDakbMuZH?s=4yg7eHYp. Use “Find in this document” and the page list.
• The same document without the share link, https://getpreviewlab.com/d/nhDakbMuZH, refuses to open: new documents are private.

• A card that moves, no key: this Kinetic sale card has “Play 2.4-second motion” and “Download GIF”. Or open the GIF itself (600×315, 2.4 seconds). Texted, the link shows the still.
• /surprise: a ready-made promo card, new each visit.
• /looks: one card in eleven looks.
• /new: one sentence becomes promo options (publishing needs the owner key).
• /make and /write: two-act links, where the card is the setup and the tap is the punchline.
• /audit: grades every page of a website's previews, here on a made-up store.
• /try: an assistant demo that shows each API call it makes.
• /agents: the API and MCP tools for AI agents.

Changes, newest first

Nov 9 · A better website audit, and a new address

• The audit finds pages without a sitemap. It follows links from the home page, up to 3 clicks deep, at most a dozen pages per section and 100 in all, and adds a sample of the sitemap when there is one. It skips carts, sign-ins, searches and files, and follows robots.txt.
• One grade for the site (the average of its pages), and a grade per section with the problem most of its pages share. Pages in a section usually share a template, so one fix covers them.
• The audit is now second on the home page, next to a list of the places a link becomes a card: texts, work chat, social apps and email.
• Preview Lab's new address is getpreviewlab.com. Links already sent on preview-lab.fly.dev keep working.

Nov 9 · Agents make engaging links (ideas from Preview Studio)

• Motion GIFs with no key. Any card with motion has a 600×315 GIF: 12 frames, 2.4 seconds, played once, ending on the still. On the card page it plays only when you tap “Play 2.4-second motion”; “Download GIF” saves it. Link previews keep the still image. New GIFs are rate limited; ones already made are free.
• Variants. One base card plus 1–4 changes (a bigger offer, another colour, another motion) gives a complete, ready-to-send link for each, with its preview tags and alt text. The same card always gets the same URL, and a “variant” that is really the same card is refused. They're untracked alternatives; an A/B test measures which wins.
• Readable colours. Text colours you pick must reach 4.5:1 contrast with the background (the WCAG AA level), or the card is refused with the ratio and what to change. Leave the text colour out and a readable one is chosen.
• Links you control. Promo links can now be revoked: final, the link answers “no longer available” and shows nothing of the card. Pausing a paused link changes nothing. Retried writes with an Idempotency-Key get the first answer back instead of a second link.
• Website rules you can test. The most specific path rule now wins (/blog/launch-week over /blog/*), and a test shows, for any page, which rule applies and a before/after list of the og: and twitter: tags it would rewrite. Nothing goes live until you approve.
• Plainer card pages. The button says where it goes (“Goes to kinetic.example.com”). Cards anyone can make say they're public and that no message was sent from the page.

Nov 9 · What gets read, across the library

• One page for the whole library (last 7, 30 or 90 days): opens, estimated time, documents opened, live links and opens by day.
• Most read, and the latest activity across documents and rooms (“Pricing options · the link for Dana · 2m · up to page 4”).
• Three lists to act on: shared but never opened (follow up), never shared (is it any use?), and shared but old (live links to something unchanged in six months).

Nov 9 · New versions keep every link

• Put a new file in a document (a fixed typo, a new price sheet). It keeps its id, so every link already sent, rooms included, opens the new file at once.
• Search, “find in this document” and the page images switch to the new file. Share cards get its cover; the words you chose for each link stay.
• The document page lists earlier versions (name, pages, size, dates). The old file itself isn't kept.
• Time per page restarts for the new pages, since page 4 may now be a different page. Opens and totals keep counting.
• Message apps keep the preview they saved before. New pastes show the new card.

Nov 9 · Rooms: several documents behind one link

• A room holds 1 to 20 documents in order, with a note from you at the top. It's for a deal or a customer: the deck, the pricing sheet and a case study in one place.
• One link per person, with its own card (“For Dana · Forkful”). It opens the room page and every document in it, and nothing else in your library.
• Each document has a link back to the room. Pause, resume, revoke and expiry work as they do for a single document, and the documents follow the room link.
• What was read: room visits for each link, and for each document the opens, estimated time and furthest page.
• Change the note or the list at any time: links already sent show the new room. Agents get 8 room tools.

Nov 8 · Share links you control (live)

• New documents are private. Only a live share link opens them. Before, anyone with the plain document address could read it. That address also skipped tracking and ignored a paused link.
• Each share link can be paused, resumed, revoked or set to expire (never, 7, 30 or 90 days, or any date within a year). Revoking is final.
• What a buyer sees:
  • A paused link shows a short notice and no pages.
  • A revoked or expired link answers “gone” (410).
  • The preview card keeps showing in every state, because message apps have already saved a copy of it.
• Documents uploaded before Nov 8 keep their plain link, so links already sent still work. An owner can turn the plain link on or off for each document.
• The owner gets a private preview link. It works for 24 hours and is never counted as a view.
• Honest wording: stats say which link was opened, not who opened it, since a link can be forwarded. Times are marked as estimates.
• Safer visitor counting: one shared way to read a visitor's address, ready for Cloudflare. It fixed a bug where a faked header could inflate tap counts.
• A daily bandwidth budget, 5 GB by default. Past it, document pages, files and motion videos pause until midnight UTC, while cards and links keep working. This caps the hosting bill's per-GB charge.
• The site came back after the hosting trial ended. All data was backed up before the update.
• A new home page that leads with the library, and this page.

Nov 6 · The document library (live Nov 8)

• Upload PDF, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, images or text, up to 15 MB.
  • The type is read from the file itself, not its name.
  • PDFs with scripts or passwords are refused, and so are zip bombs.
• A preview card from the document: its first page, title and page count, in any of 11 looks.
• Search every page of every file: ranked results with page numbers and highlighted snippets. The viewer has its own find.
• One tracked link per person, with its own card (“For Dana · Forkful”).
• Engagement: opens and estimated seconds per page, for each link. No cookies, and no addresses are stored.
• A viewer that works on phones.
• Nine tools for AI agents (MCP and REST): upload, list, get, update, delete, search, share, update a share, and engagement.

Nov 6 · Agents, looks, motion and accounts

• Full card control for agents: create, change, search and delete links, upload photos, and check how each app will show a link.
• Eleven looks (art directions), and A/B tests of one look against another.
• Motion: an MP4 for iMessage, a GIF for Discord and a still everywhere else, in 9 motion styles.
• Accounts and teams are built (Google, Discord and email sign-in, workspaces), but stay switched off until sign-in is set up.

Nov 2 · Two-act links, websites, channels

• Two-act links: 8 stages with reveals, endings, private receipts and replies.
• For websites: a free audit of up to 100 pages found by following links, brand and path rules, and a one-line install.
• Telegram, Slack and web-push channels, a Claude plugin and a ChatGPT app. The channels stay off until their tokens are set.

Nov 1 · One sentence to promo options

• Type one sentence and get 3 to 5 promo options. Nothing is invented: offers without a deal are marked as samples. The Ask Instinct demo shows each call.

Oct 31 · Promo links

• 20 promo cards, redirect links whose destination can change without changing the link, A/B tests, follow-up text sequences (sent only 8 AM to 9 PM, with STOP text), and results.
• An MCP endpoint for agents.
• Security fixes for open redirects, script injection and private destinations.

What only the owner sees

The library pages need the owner key, so a reviewer can't open them. Here's what they hold:

• Library: drag-and-drop upload, a grid of documents, search with snippets, and filters by tag and type.
• What gets read: the library-wide numbers and lists above.
• Rooms: a list on the library page, “New room” (name, note, pick and order documents), and a room's page with its links (Pause, Resume, Revoke), visits and time per document.
• A document's page:
  • Its card in all 11 looks, the title, summary and button words, and a download switch.
  • The plain-link switch, and “Share with someone” (name, company, look, “Stops working”).
  • A table of share links: status, opens, estimated time, last opened, and Pause, Resume, Reopen and Revoke buttons.
  • Time-per-page bars.
  • “New version”: put in a new file, and see the earlier versions.
• My links and Results: every promo link, its taps, A/B tests and sequences.

Honest limits

• One owner, no public sign-up yet.
• Opens count links, not people. Seconds are estimates from a visible browser tab.
• PowerPoint, Word and Excel files show their text in the viewer, not drawn slides or pages. PDFs and images show as pages.
• Only made-up brands (Kinetic, Pulse, Forkful and others) appear in samples.
• One small server in one region.

Coming next

• Alerts when a link is opened, sign-in for teams, and “ask the library” questions answered from your own documents.
• Later: what people do with what you send, across every link, so the next card does better.

If you're reviewing this

Open the links above on a phone. Text the demo link to yourself and check how the card looks. Report to Brian, with the URL for each:

• anything broken;
• anything confusing;
• anything that claims more than it does.