Changelog

Another Tuesday, another update.

This week, we’re launching PieAssist — an AI-powered assistant across the Pie ecosystem.

PieAssist can:

• Answer developer questions instantly
• Help troubleshoot issues
• Guide users through setup and configuration
• Provide documentation assistance
• Escalate conversations to human support whenever needed

PieAssist is designed to support developers using:

• PieSocket
• PieApp
• PieDB
• PieMail
• and other Pie services

Whether you're deploying apps, managing databases, debugging WebSockets, or exploring APIs, PieAssist is now available to help 24/7.

The goal is simple: faster answers, less waiting, and a smoother developer experience across the entire Pie platform.

We’ll continue improving PieAssist with your feedback and real-world usage.

Self-Hosted PieSocket is Now Free

Last week, we made the PieSocket self-hosted server completely free for everyone.

You now have the flexibility to:

• Run PieSocket on your own infrastructure (self-hosted)
• Or continue using our fully managed cloud version

⚡ Quick Installation

Getting started with the self-hosted version is simple:

npm install -g piectl

Launch PieSocket with:

pie socket serve

📘 Documentation

We’ve prepared a step-by-step guide to help you get started:

👉 PieSocket Self-hosted Documentation

See you next week, with another update.

💬 Join Our Discord

Have questions or want to connect with the community?

👉 https://pie.host/discord

This week, we introduced a suite of new WebSocket-focused tools to help developers test, debug, and optimise real-time connections more effectively.

🚀 New Tools

• WebSocket Playground
  Interactively connect to WebSocket servers, send/receive messages, and experiment in real time by writing your own WebSocket client code.

• WebSocket Close Frame Inspector
  Analyse close frames with detailed insights into status codes and reasons for disconnections.

• WebSocket Stability Checker
  Monitor connection reliability over time and detect unexpected drops or interruptions.

• WebSocket Latency Checker
  Measure round-trip latency to better understand real-time performance.

• WebSocket Stress Tester
  Simulate high-load scenarios to evaluate how your WebSocket server handles scale.

Next week, we are making the PieSocket self-hosted version free! You can simply run 

pie socket serve

to launch your own PieSocket server instance. Stay tuned!

 

This release brings first-class cron job support and introduces pie.json for PieApps— pie.json is a simple config file that gives you full control over deployments and scheduled tasks directly from your repo.

✨ What’s New

📄 pie.json configuration

You can now add a pie.json file to your repository root to configure your app without using the dashboard.
PieApp reads this file at the start of every deployment.

{
  "type": "frontend",
  "subtype": "nextjs",
  "crons": [
    {
      "schedule": "* * * * *",
      "command": "/usr/bin/php /app/artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1"
    }
  ]
}

Supported keys: type, subtype, crons: more coming soon.
See the Configuration docs for full details.

⏰ Cron jobs

Define scheduled tasks inside pie.json using the crons key.
Each cron includes a standard 5-part schedule and a shell command.

• 🔢 Up to 100 cron jobs per app
• ⚙️ Works across all app types (Laravel, WordPress, Node.js, custom PHP)
• 🔄 Changes apply after the next deployment

Crons are installed in your container at build time and run automatically.

🤖 Automatic app detection

PieApp now detects your app’s runtime and framework on every deploy—now minimal manual setup is needed.

It checks files like artisan, composer.json, wp-config.php, and package.json.

Detection priority:

1. pie.json (always overrides)
2. Laravel → artisan + composer.json
3. WordPress → wp-config.php
4. JS frameworks → package.json (Next.js, React, Vue, etc.)
5. Custom PHP → composer.json
6. Fallback → Frontend

📊 Cronjobs dashboard tab

A new Cronjobs tab in the PieApp dashboard shows all active cron jobs from your deployed pie.json.

• 👀 View all cron entries at a glance
• 📭 No pie.json or empty crons = no entries shown

🚦 How to upgrade

No changes needed for existing apps.

To use cron jobs or override app detection:
👉 Add a pie.json to your repo and redeploy.

See the Cronjob documentation for more details.

This week, we shipped a major upgrade to our online WebSocket client and the Chrome extension,  focusing on multi-connection testing, better debugging tools, and improved developer experience.

✨ New Features & Improvements

🔌 Multi-Connection Testing
Run up to 3 simultaneous WebSocket connections in single, dual, or triple panel layouts. Easily compare responses across different environments without switching tabs.

🌐 Supports ws:// and wss://
Full support for both secure (wss) and unsecured (ws) protocols. Works seamlessly with any WebSocket server.

🔄 Auto-Reconnect
Simulate real-world client behaviour with configurable auto-reconnect, including custom retry limits and intervals.

💓 Heartbeat / Ping Support
Keep connections alive using configurable heartbeat messages sent at regular intervals — ideal for testing server keep-alive logic.

🧠 Message History
Quickly navigate previously sent messages using keyboard shortcuts. No need to retype payloads during iterative testing.

🧾 JSON Pretty-Print
Incoming messages are automatically formatted for readability. Switch between raw and pretty-printed JSON views instantly.

🔍 Log Filtering & Search
Filter logs by type (sent, received, error, info) and perform real-time search across all messages.

📤 Export Logs
Download complete session logs as a timestamped .log file for sharing or debugging.

📊 Live Connection Stats
Monitor bytes sent/received, message count, and connection duration — all updated live.

🌙 Dark Mode
A smoother experience for long debugging sessions with built-in dark mode support.