Algorithmic design
Privacy, safety and limits
A script is code that someone wrote: you, a colleague, or an assistant. Popcorn treats every script as untrusted and runs it in a sealed sandbox, so your designs stay yours.
What a script can and cannot do
- A script has no network access. It cannot send anything anywhere, and it cannot reach your account, your other designs or anything stored in your browser.
- It sees only the size of the artboard, the objects you selected and the document swatches. It never sees your other objects, images or fonts.
- It can only return shapes and changes to the selected objects. Popcorn checks every value before showing the preview. A script cannot add images, links or fonts, so it cannot make your design load anything from elsewhere.
- Opening a design never runs its scripts, and neither does receiving a shared design or a collaborator's change. A script only runs in your own window: when you press Run, move one of its sliders or, for scripts that use the selection, change the selection.
- A run that takes longer than five seconds is stopped. Before the first run, Popcorn saves a recovery copy of your design, in case a script uses so much memory that the browser tab closes.
What leaves Popcorn
Nothing, unless you paste it somewhere yourself. Copy prompt in the Ask AI tab includes the artboard size, the kind, position and size of the selected objects, the swatch colors and, when you change a script, its code. It never includes text from your design, layer names or images.
Turning it off for a team
Workspace owners and admins can switch algorithmic design off in Workspace settings ▸ Algorithmic design. The menu then disappears from that workspace's designs. Groups that were made with a script stay as they are; they just cannot be edited as scripts there.
This is a policy choice for teams that must never run user-written code on client work. The sandbox is what keeps scripts contained either way.
Limits
| Limit | Value |
|---|---|
| Time per run | 5 seconds |
| Shapes in the preview | 20,000 |
| Separate shapes per Apply | 2,000 (use Merged by style for more) |
| Size added per Apply | about 3 MB, and never enough to make the design too large to save |
The bottom line of the window says how much an Apply would add. When it is too much, Apply stays off and the Controls tab explains what to change.
Algorithmic design is not available on phones, in view-only and shared-link sessions, or when you customize a product in a shop. A script cannot add text, images or gradients yet.