What can a connected AI read, check and take out of my site?
Once you connect an AI such as Claude Design to bernard, it can do more than make changes for you. It can look, check its own work before saving it, and take your own files away to work on elsewhere. None of that touches your live site - the approval gate only applies to a change that is about to go live, and reading, checking and taking out files never gets that far.
The prompt
“Read [this page]’s structure, check [this piece of markup] before you write it, show me a phone and desktop preview, and take out [the logo / a photo / a font] as a short-lived link.”
Signed in, Get my prompt fills in your site for you. Otherwise press Copy and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard once: Use your own AI (opens in a new tab).
Telling your sites apart
If your account holds more than one site - a live one and a demo copy, say, or a handful of client sites - ask your AI to list them. It gets back which one is a copy of which, when each was last edited, whether a draft is sitting unapproved, and the address each one answers to. That is enough to point a design tool at the right site before it touches anything.
Reading several things in one go
Ask your AI to read a handful of files together, or several parts of one long page, instead of asking one question at a time. A page and its stylesheet together, or the top and the middle of a long file, come back in a single answer, which is faster and cheaper than reading them one by one.
Checking a change before it is written
Before any markup - your own AI’s, or something pasted in from a design tool - is actually saved, ask your AI to check it first. The check reports exactly what would happen: anything that would be removed for safety, anything the save would refuse outright and why, and whether any of Bernard’s own interactive touches (a menu that opens, a gallery that slides, a section that reveals) would actually work on that page once the change lands. Nothing is saved by the check itself - it is a look ahead, as many times as useful, before the real save.
Seeing it before it lands
Ask for a preview of your draft at phone and desktop widths. The preview can also report anything that went wrong while it rendered - an image or stylesheet that failed to load, an error thrown while drawing the page - so a design tool finds out about a mistake from the preview rather than from you.
Element by element, not the whole page
Every meaningful piece of a page - a heading, a button, a section - carries a permanent label once your site has been moved onto bernard. That label is how a design tool sends back one change at a time - “update this heading, move that button” - rather than replacing the whole page and risking everything else on it. A page that does not have labels yet, usually one your own AI wrote from a blank page, can be given them in one step - a small change saved to your draft, not to your live site - so that changes can be addressed element by element there too from then on.
Taking your own files out
Ask your AI to hand over your site’s own photos, logo or fonts so a design tool outside bernard can use them. There are two ways, and your AI picks whichever suits the file:
- A short-lived link. The file itself never leaves your site’s storage; what your AI hands over is a web address that expires after a short time. Anyone holding that link can use it until it expires, so treat it the way you would a password shared for one job - and every link handed out is recorded. This is the right way to hand over a large photo or a whole font file.
- The file itself, for small files. For a small image or icon, your AI can bring the actual bytes back into the conversation rather than a link - simpler when the other tool just wants to look at it or a design system needs to embed it directly.
Both routes work on a draft-only file that has never been published, and both work even if your site’s own address has not gone live yet - they read your site’s own storage rather than its public address.
See Put an AI agent to work on my business for the standing-job side of connecting an AI to your site - this article is about what it can look at and take out along the way.
The honest limits
A connected AI reads what your site’s own files and storage can show it. It cannot invent a label that was never stamped, and it cannot make a link that never expires - every link it hands out has a lifetime, by design, so a copy that leaks stops working on its own.
Questions people ask
- Can a connected AI change my site without me knowing?
- No. Reading, checking and taking out files never touches your live site - none of it needs your approval because none of it changes anything. When a connected AI does propose a change, it lands in your draft, and nothing goes live until you approve it on the preview page.
- Does a connected AI publish on its own?
- No. A connected AI acts with your authority, the same as you acting yourself, and it is instructed never to publish on its own initiative. It publishes only when you ask it to, the same as pressing Approve yourself.
- Will a design tool see my old draft or the file that is actually live?
- Reads default to your current draft, which is the safer choice when you are mid-edit. For your own photos, logo and fonts, a design tool can ask for the published copy instead when that is what it needs to match.
- What if my site has not gone live yet, or a page has never been touched by an outside tool before?
- Both still work. Taking out your logo, photos or fonts reads them from your site’s own storage, not from your public address, so it works even before your domain has moved. And a page that has no permanent labels yet - one your own AI wrote rather than one that came from moving your old site - can be given them in one step before an outside tool starts sending changes back.