Live preview boots your actual site — your framework, your dev script, your templates — in a sandbox and shows your edits rendering before anything is committed.

This is not a Markdown preview. It’s your site.

Before You Start

Live preview runs on a Vercel sandbox, which needs a Vercel access token connected at the organization level:

connected at Organization Settings → Sandbox.

Any Vercel plan works, including the free one, and the sandbox runs on your own Vercel quota. Full setup steps are in Sandbox Settings.

If you click Preview without a token connected, Sitepins takes you to that page.

Starting a Preview

Click Preview in the editor header or on the project header.

Sitepins clones your repository into a sandbox, installs dependencies, and runs the project’s dev script. The button shows each step as it happens — this takes a minute or two the first time.

When it’s ready, the preview opens in a new tab.

Editing With the Preview Open

Keep typing. Your uncommitted changes are pushed into the running sandbox automatically, a couple of seconds after you stop typing.

How the page updates depends on your framework:

• Frameworks with hot reload (Vite-based, Hugo) repaint on their own
• Others are refreshed by Sitepins

Committing also triggers a sync, so the preview follows your published state too.

The Preview Menu

The chevron next to the Preview button gives you:

• Sync Preview — force a refresh from the repository
• Open Preview — bring the preview tab back to the front
• Destroy Preview — shut the sandbox down

Status Indicators

The button icon tells you what the sandbox is doing:

Indicator	Meaning
Spinner	Starting up
Green monitor	Running and current
Amber monitor	Running, but the branch has moved ahead — hit Sync Preview
Crossed-out monitor	Stopped

Sitepins re-checks staleness when you return to the tab, comparing the sandbox against the latest commit on your branch.

Session Limits

• A running sandbox stays alive as long as you’re working, with a heartbeat every few minutes
• Sessions are capped at 45 minutes, with a warning five minutes before
• Closing the tab shuts the sandbox down rather than leaving it running

Start a new preview any time — the cap is per session, not per day.

Supported Frameworks

The sandbox knows how to run:

Framework	Dev port
Next.js, TanStack Start, Nuxt, Remix, Hexo, Gatsby	3000 (Gatsby 8000)
Astro	4321
Hugo	1313
SvelteKit, Vite, React	5173
Jekyll	4000

Hugo previews also provision the Go and Hugo toolchain, and draft/future content is enabled so unpublished posts show up in the preview.

Anything else falls back to a standard dev script on port 3000.

Troubleshooting

The preview fails to start. Check that your repository’s dev script runs cleanly from a fresh clone. The sandbox does install then dev with no local state, so a missing dependency or a required environment variable will surface here.

The preview is blank or 404s. Confirm the dev server binds the port your framework normally uses — a custom port in your dev script can leave the sandbox pointing at nothing.

Changes aren’t appearing. Use Sync Preview. If the indicator is amber, the sandbox is behind your branch.

The button sends you to Sandbox Settings. No Vercel token is connected for this organization.