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Welcome to NikolaCMS

Introducing NikolaCMS — a static site where all content is managed through Claude Code. No admin panel, no UI, no database. Just files and conventions.

Posted on · by Nikola

What is NikolaCMS?

NikolaCMS is an experiment in rethinking how content management works. Instead of a traditional CMS with an admin panel, dashboards, and a database, everything here is managed through Claude Code — Anthropic's AI-powered CLI tool.

The idea is simple: files are the database. Markdown files with YAML frontmatter hold all the content. Conventions (documented in CONVENTIONS.md) are the API. Claude Code is the interface.

Why build it this way?

A few reasons:

  • Speed — static output means fast pages everywhere, served from Cloudflare's global CDN
  • Simplicity — no server, no database, no admin panel to maintain or secure
  • Version control — every change is a git commit, fully auditable and reversible
  • AI-native — Claude Code understands the conventions and can act as a capable content editor

The architecture

Content lives in content/{locale}/ as plain markdown files. The build pipeline processes each file through:

  1. Markdown → HTML conversion
  2. Snippet resolution (e.g. snippet:mysnippetkey wrapped in double curly braces)
  3. Autolink application
  4. Injection into Astro layout templates
  5. Static HTML output

Multilingual content is handled by locale-specific directories (en/, pt/, fr/). UI strings live in i18n/{locale}.yaml.

Getting started

Read CONVENTIONS.md at the root of the repo — it documents everything you need to know about creating content, managing SEO, using snippets, and deploying.

**Ready to get started?** [Contact us today](/en/contact) and we'll help you set everything up.