Getting Started
PsyCloud is a platform for building and running browser-based behavioral experiments. It handles the hard parts — reliable data capture, reproducible randomization, participant recruitment, hosting, and export — so you can focus on the experiment itself.
You can author a study visually in Studio, in code with the Python or R SDK, or by importing an existing experiment. Every path produces the same Project Bundle, compiles to the same runnable Study Bundle, and runs on the same runtime.
Choose your path
Build a study by clicking, no code. The fastest way to a runnable experiment.
Author with a fluent Python builder — great for reproducibility and version control.
Author with a pipe-friendly R builder, in the language you analyze data in.
Serve, run, validate, compile, and build studies from the terminal.
Maintain canonical examples and legacy CoffeeScript conversions.
Bring in jsPsych, PsychoJS, PsychoPy, or a PsyCloud bundle and keep editing.
If you're new, the Studio quickstart gets you to a complete, running study in a couple of minutes — and you can always export it to code later.
Pick by workflow
| If you want to... | Start here |
|---|---|
| Click together a study and preview it immediately | Studio quickstart |
| Generate many study variants from data or scripts | Python quickstart or R quickstart |
| Serve, run, or compile an existing study locally | JavaScript runtime quickstart |
| Convert or maintain repo examples | CoffeeScript DSL quickstart |
| Bring an existing experiment into PsyCloud | Importing & Migrating |
The end-to-end workflow
However you author, a study moves through the same lifecycle:
- Author
Define the structure, the trials, and what participants see — in Studio or code.
- Preview
Run it against the real runtime with a simulated participant to debug logic and timing (Preview).
- Launch
Validate, publish an immutable version, host a run, and recruit participants (Launch).
- Monitor & export
Watch sessions arrive (Monitor), then inspect and export the data (Data).
What makes PsyCloud different
- Studio-first, code-ready — a visual editor and two authoring SDKs that share one format, so you're never locked into one way of working.
- Reliable capture — offline-first data collection that survives flaky connections.
- Reproducible — deterministic, seedable randomization and explicit counterbalancing.
- Auditable — strong provenance from design through to each recorded response.
- Verifiable examples — canonical examples are checked across CoffeeScript, Python, R, and the bundled runtime contracts.