I took real customization problems from the Squarespace Forum and tried solving them with SquareKicker Compose. The results surprised me.
One of the first problems I found in the Squarespace Forum involved a product popup.
Someone wanted visitors to click a text link in a blog post, open a product in a popup, select their options, and add it to their cart without leaving the page.
Simple enough, right?
Apparently not. They'd already tried several plugins, and none worked the way they wanted.
I copied their request into SquareKicker Compose. A few minutes later, I had a working version of what they were looking for.
So naturally, I wanted to see how far I could take this.
What is SquareKicker Compose?
SquareKicker Compose is an AI-powered tool that lets you create customizations directly inside Squarespace.
Instead of going to ChatGPT or Claude, explaining what you want, generating code, copying it into Squarespace, and troubleshooting whatever doesn't work, you can have that entire conversation without leaving your website.
Compose can see the page you're working on, including its existing elements, and generate customizations in that context.
But the part I find most interesting is that it doesn't just generate code. It also creates controls that allow you to adjust the customization afterward.
I'll explain why that matters.
Disclosure: This article is part of a promotional collaboration with SquareKicker. The experiments and observations below reflect my own experience using Compose.
A product popup without a dedicated lightbox plugin
The first experiment came from a Squarespace Forum discussion about opening products inside a popup.
The person asking had already tried several lightbox plugins without getting the result they wanted.
Rather than attempting to troubleshoot any of those solutions, I copied their request into Compose.
It understood what I wanted and asked one clarifying question about how to identify links that should trigger the popup.
Then it generated the customization.
The initial preview didn't work, but when I opened the page in a separate window, there it was: a product popup with the product information and purchase controls.
I could interact with the Add to Cart functionality without navigating to the full product page.
I haven't tested every possible product configuration or checkout scenario, but for the demonstration, the result was pretty compelling.
What impressed me even more was what happened afterward.
Compose had generated controls for adjusting the popup's width, height, corners, title, and other settings.
And if I wanted a control that wasn't available, I could ask it to create one.
Now I had the customization and an interface for modifying it, without having to write any of the code myself.
An infinitely scrolling logo carousel
Next, I found another forum discussion.
Someone wanted to turn a standard Squarespace gallery into a continuously scrolling logo carousel.
Two people had already responded with solutions. One recommended a plugin from Will Myers. Another shared a free coding tutorial from Square Genius.
Both perfectly reasonable suggestions.
But I know what often happens next. You purchase the plugin or follow the tutorial, get something working, and then realize you want to change the spacing, speed, direction, or some other detail.
Now you've got another problem to solve.
So I opened a Squarespace page containing a regular gallery section and gave Compose essentially the same request.
It generated the customization, along with controls for adjusting the logo spacing, animation speed, direction, and hover behavior.
Except there was one problem.
It wasn't scrolling.
I refreshed the page. Opened it in another window. Still nothing.
So I told Compose what was happening.
It identified a problem with the animation and proposed a different approach.
That got things moving, but the result still wasn't the seamless infinite loop I wanted.
So I pushed it again.
Eventually, it produced the continuous scrolling carousel I was looking for.
I didn't have to figure out why the original code failed or search for a solution. I just described what was wrong.
And once it worked, I could continue customizing the result using the controls Compose had created.
The whole thing took a few minutes and a little back-and-forth.
Not flawless. But certainly easier than trying to debug an unfamiliar piece of JavaScript myself.
When Compose couldn't do what I asked
My third experiment wasn't from the Squarespace Forum.
I was working on the blog for Bigger Budget Projects and realized I needed some thumbnail images.
Now, I'm not particularly interested in spending hours designing blog thumbnails. I just wanted something that looked good.
So I asked Compose if it could make them.
Its response surprised me.
It couldn't generate actual image files, but it offered to create the thumbnail designs directly on the page using code.
I told it to show me something.
And I liked what it produced.
In fact, I thought the designs were better than anything I would have come up with myself.
But I had a problem.
These weren't actual images. They were visual elements generated with code. I couldn't use them as normal blog thumbnails or share them on social media.
So I explained that.
Compose came back with a workaround.
It added download buttons to each design, visible only in editing mode, allowing me to save them as PNG files.
I could then upload those images to Squarespace like any other blog thumbnail.
That was probably my favorite moment of the entire experiment.
I asked for something Compose couldn't directly do. It proposed an alternative. Then, when I explained why that alternative wasn't quite enough, it figured out another way to get me what I wanted.
The real breakthrough isn't the code
We've been able to generate custom CSS and JavaScript using AI for a while now.
But generating code and getting that code to work on your website are two different things.
There's the back-and-forth between the AI tool and Squarespace. The copying and pasting. The unexpected conflicts. The errors you don't understand. And the question of what happens when you want to change something later.
Compose removes a lot of that friction.
It can work with the page you're actually editing. You can see the result, explain what's wrong, and ask for adjustments.
And in my experiments, it also generated the controls I needed to make those adjustments myself.
That last part deserves more attention.
With the scrolling carousel, I didn't just end up with an animation. I ended up with an animation I could control.
Spacing. Speed. Direction.
I could continue experimenting without rewriting the code or asking a developer to modify it.
Of course, none of this means every customization will work perfectly, or that professionally developed plugins no longer have a place. Reliability, compatibility, support, and ongoing maintenance still matter. Particularly when you're dealing with ecommerce functionality.
But for the kinds of customizations Squarespace users have traditionally spent hours searching for, I think Compose offers a pretty compelling alternative.
I'm starting to look at Squarespace differently
There's something I said while recording the blog thumbnail experiment that I've kept thinking about.
Until you know what a tool can do, you don't know when to take it out.
That's been my experience with Compose.
I started by asking for blog thumbnails.
Then I was building product popups and scrolling carousels.
Before long, I was thinking about an entirely different project: creating an Airbnb-style calendar experience for selling sponsorship placements directly through my Squarespace website.
I've since built that booking system, although not with Compose.
But that's the point.
I'm starting to imagine solutions to problems I wouldn't previously have attempted to solve myself.
For years, when Squarespace couldn't do something I wanted, the next question was usually whether I needed a plugin, some custom code, or a developer.
Now I'm finding myself asking a different question.
Have I tried asking Compose?
And after these experiments, I suspect I'll be asking that question a lot more often.
Have a Squarespace customization you've been struggling with? Leave it in the comments. I'm looking for more real-world problems to put Compose to the test.
