Refinery is a chrome extension that lets you edit your React app in-browser and then generates the corresponding code changes automatically. To do so, we are using metaprogramming techniques and a healthy dose of human review . We’ve also started to experiment with using GPT-3 to generate code changes as well and it looks promising!

After building a Shopify app in React, there were so many times when we wanted to quickly change some copy here and there, but didn’t want to have to start our dev environment, open our text editor, make the change, create a branch, create a PR, … you get it. Luckily our team is 3 software engineers, but it got us thinking around how would our first marketing or sales hire make these changes?

The current version of Refinery essentially turns your existing Git repo into a CMS. Right now you can use Refinery to tweak copy, but more functionality is coming soon. Specifically, we’re working on adding the ability to tweak CSS, add links & tooltips to copy, and run A/B tests on different possible tweaks… all which can be done in-browser.

We’ve on-boarded a few companies in the past week where Refinery is typically being used by non-engineers (founders, PMs, & marketers) who don’t want to bother engineers with small copy tweaks. The engineers at these companies have also been happy because they can work on the cool product stuff and rubber stamp the PR’s that Refinery puts out.

Installation is really easy. Install our chrome extension (invite only at the moment), link your team’s github, and you’re good to go. We plan on supporting more browsers in the future, working our way down the most popular.

We’d love to hear what the HN community thinks! We’ll be in the comments all day. If you’re really keen on trying it, email me at [email protected] and mention hacker news and we’ll bump you to the top of the waitlist.