I’m still pretty new to Firebase Studio and I’m currently working on my first project using App Blueprints, mostly with the help of AI assistance. I ran into a problem and would love to get your advice or suggestions.
For the past few days, I have been working on a single Blueprint for my app. I had to reset the project several times because the virtual machine (VM) would freeze or crash, which meant I lost my chat history each time (the chat window next to the code view would just be empty again after a reset).
Whenever I try to interact with the AI chat to fix bugs or implement new features for my existing app, the assistant now ignores my current project and instantly suggests starting a completely new App Blueprint (see right side of the screenshot – “Context Compass”). It doesn’t recognize the app that’s currently running (left side in the screenshot) and no longer responds to prompts for code changes, bugfixes, or feature additions in my actual app.
What I tried / What’s happening:
The AI only wants to start a new project instead of continuing with my current codebase.
I still see my working app and its code, but I can’t get the AI to help me iterate or make fixes.
I tried deleting the new Blueprint, but the chat remains stuck in “new app” mode.
I lost all previous chat history/context due to the VM resets.
My main question:
How can I get the AI to return to normal code/chat mode and help me continue working on my existing app, instead of forcing a new app blueprint each time?
Is there any way to restore context or “remind” the AI of my current codebase, so I can get code suggestions, bugfixes, or add new features as before?
Any advice or workarounds would be greatly appreciated, as this is blocking my workflow.
! grafik|690x297
studio-413803001:~/studio{master}$ ls -al ~/.idx/ai/capra-thread.json
-rw-r–r-- 1 user user 26537 May 16 15:07 /home/user/.idx/ai/capra-thread.json
But in my file explorer, there is no ai folder inside my .idx directory at all.
See screenshot – or am I missing something? Where exactly can I find this file? I do not have the ai folder.
What can I do with it?
Is it possible to use or restore the context from this file? Or is there another way to get my old AI chat context back?
Problem still ongoing:
At the moment, the only thing the Prototyper does is treat every single text input from me as a new prompt to build a completely new app. It never returns to the old app or lets me do code fixes for my existing project. While the existing project still works in that version I saved last bevor this issue came up.
Same here. Prototyper is stuck in a loop and won’t stop asking me about prototyping another app. Meanwhile, gemini on the code side has forgotten how to find my code or know where to look. I have to hand feed it. Not sure why. The tool appears to be getting less useful despite all its strengths. I’ve spent more time putzing around and repeating work over the past few weeks.
Still, there’s promise here. But for now, like you, I’d like to find the solution to ending this prototyping loop.
Even though I made a topic on this (recently) posting in here to follow for updates as I have the same issues. Also, can not located the files like you have shown above. Any solutions would be great!
You’ll find two JSON files there—your installation may show them as empty, especially the more important capra-thread.json.
Back them up regularly (e.g., after each major coding session). If you have an existing backup—no matter how old—copy it into this folder to restore your data.
Switch to~/User/studio/ and open dev.nix located in the .idx subdirectory.
After the reset completes, your app will be running again.
Note: The project history will reflect the backup you restored. You won’t be able to recover individual checkpoints, but you’ll have the last working version of your app.
I am having the same issue and I have found a few other threads from this week with users reporting the same problem. I am backing up all of my data now and next I am going to try to add them to a new project file.
I tried doing this once before, but none of my new projects are showing up in my Firebase Console or in my Cloud console- even after doing all of the troubleshooting. This makes me hesitant to start from scratch again- because I can’t access the API keys I need in these new projects and I still haven’t heard back from Support about this issue yet.
Thanks - this has not resolved my “prototyper stuck in prototyping loop” issue I’m afraid. Prototyper is simply hung up, or hung over, from me. Maybe I deserve it. But I am hesitant to start from scratch for the 3rd time. Appreciate the info though. Bug report already submitted.
I have attempted this solution as well and it has not corrected my issue as well. It is the same as @grazinghippo . Thank you as well for providing us something to try!
Ran into the same prototyping loop with my app as well. It keeps wanting to make a new app instead of working on the existing one. It’s very frustrating and am unable to use prototyper because of it. Maybe this has to do with the new Gemini 2.5 pro version that went live today for prototyper…
On a +ve note, I found that if I stop using the built-in gemini model and instead enter my gemini-api-key, switch to another model, suddenly, at least for me, gemini remembers my chats and can also look at other files - kind of like the prototyper if it needs to - depending on the prompts. So, I’ve found a workaround and remarkably gotten more done fixing bugs this way than with the prototyper.
But - if I had to start from scratch, this probably would not be a substitute for the prototyper - I haven’t tried it this way; but it does appear to be much better at analyzing and digging deeper, perhaps due to the newer model chosen. The prototyper takes longer sometimes and has often made me hippo mad by going in a groundhog’s day of bug fixing attempts…
Thats not a bad idea! I have not tried that, but I have tried to the coding section ai and have not had the best results.
On a different note, I did get the prototyper in a different project help me debug my current project. In the end, it boiled down to the idea that the prototyper’s files are inherently on the firesbase studio server side and not in the projects. Leading the prototyper to believe that their are no direct configurable files to adjust or change that would break this loop.
Upon further testing in other projects I have been able to recreate the issue by asking the ai to fix a problem that never really gets fixed which causes it to crash. This mixed with multiple uses of the “Annotate” feature with the same issues helps speed up that process.
To circumvent this, Its best (in my opinon) after two attempts of the same problem to just let it be or to tackle the problem from a different perspective.
Lastly, there appears to be a “Source Control” button on the left menu beneath the “search” function that houses the conversations with AI. I will be asking the prototyper to create a subfolder within my app to house our conversations every 3 edits in a way that if another chat was to be directed to it, should be able to pick up from where we left off.
This, in theory, would be a personal back up to their server side prototyper files.
This happened to me also I proceeded with the new app suggestions and now my whole app is gone and broken and there is no way to get my old app back… what ever you do don’t continue with the new app suggestion…
The devs in another post similiar to this mentioned they will be rolling out a fix hopefully before EOW. If it did break because you used the “prototype this app” after you had already developed your app, there might be a way to roll it back IF the chat history is restored. Every time an edit is made, it gives you the ability to roll back to that edit. So, lets hope those chats get restored on the roll out!
Yeah, was sitting and waiting for the VM to connect so much yesterday that I hit that reset button–guided into it by the support doc, mind you. Now I’m in the same boat. Wants to prototype a new app.
I was able to push my files to git, so I tried starting a new firebase.studio project by importing the repo, but then you don’t get the prototyper agent at all.
I feel stuck, like all I can do is start over. Which I really don’t want to do.
Do you know if this will fix projects that are broken ie: all my history is there in the chat, but all it wants to do is prototype a new app. Or, will it just stop it from happening to new projects in the future?
