Creating & editing flags

The batched, explicit-save editing model.

This page covers creating flags and the dashboard's editing model.

Creating a flag

In a project's Flags tab, create a flag with:

  • A key in lowercase_snake_case (e.g. new_checkout). Permanent and used in code — choose carefully.
  • A type — boolean, string, or number. See Flags & flag types.

The flag is created across all of the project's environments at once; you then target it per environment.

The editing model: explicit Save, not auto-save

Switchbox batches your edits and saves on an explicit click — it never auto-saves on toggle. This is deliberate: a single Save commits a complete, intentional state and publishes the config exactly once, so you never ship a half-finished change or trigger a burst of publishes mid-edit.

As you change a flag — toggling it, editing rules, setting a rollout — an unsaved-changes bar appears with Save and Discard. Nothing reaches your apps until you click Save. Each Save publishes one new config for each environment you changed.

The flags list with per-environment toggles and an unsaved-changes bar showing Save and Discard
Toggling a flag stages an edit — the unsaved-changes bar collects them until you Save.

A reload or tab-close while you have unsaved changes warns you first, so edits aren't lost by accident.

You can edit flags from two places, both using this batched model:

  • The flags list — quick toggles across many flags, then one Save.
  • The flag detail page — full targeting, rollouts, and values for one flag.

Values for string, number, and json flags

Non-boolean flags carry a value pair, edited on the flag detail page (a json flag's values are edited as JSON in a validated text field):

  • Default value — what users get when the flag is off or unmatched.
  • Enabled value — what matched / in-rollout users get.

These are authored once at the flag level and apply to every environment. Need a different value in one environment? Open that environment's value control and set an override — it applies only there, and clears back to the flag-level value when you remove it. Boolean flags have no value pair (on is implicitly true).

Audit log

Every save is recorded — who changed what, and when. See a flag's history on its detail page, and the team-wide feed on the Activity page.

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