LightCMS — AI-Native Content Management System

Your website is a conversation

LightCMS is a free, open-source content management system built for AI agents. Create pages, manage assets, customize themes, and publish content through natural language — with Claude Code, Cowork, or any MCP-compatible client. No dashboard required.

Open-source (MIT). Self-hosted. You own your data, your hosting, and your code.


Built for agents, not admin panels

Every CMS was built for humans clicking through menus. LightCMS was built for the age of agents — where AI carries out your intent through conversation. The entire website is an API that agents can operate.

LightCMS includes a full Model Context Protocol (MCP) server with 59 tools for managing your entire site. Create content, update themes, manage templates, upload assets, handle redirects, preview pages before publishing, batch-publish multiple pages at once, build dynamic index pages with tags and snippets, and run scoped search-and-replace across specific folders or templates — all through natural language. Say “create a blog post about machine learning” and it’s live. Say “change the primary color to navy” and the theme updates.

MCP Server — 59 Tools

Content CRUD, batch publish, content preview, versioning, templates, assets (including upload from URL), theme with version pinning, config, redirects, folders, collections, snippets, search, site-wide and scoped search-and-replace. Supports stdio (Claude Code) and HTTP streamable (Cowork, Claude Desktop) transports.

OAuth 2.1 for Remote Agents

Sandboxed desktop apps like Cowork connect securely over HTTP using OAuth 2.1 with PKCE. No embedded passwords — authorize once and the agent manages your site. Full RFC 7591/8414/9728 compliance.

Dynamic Index Pages

Tag content, create reusable HTML snippets, and embed live lc:query directives in templates to build auto-updating index pages. Filter by tag, category, template, or folder. Pages regenerate automatically when tagged content changes.

Multi-User RBAC

Three roles — admin, editor, viewer — with granular permissions enforced on every admin page and API endpoint. Per-user API keys inherit role permissions. Full audit log with 365-day retention.

Hybrid Search

Full-text exact matching + semantic vector search (Voyage AI embeddings) merged via reciprocal rank fusion. Configurable structural ranking, title boosting, typeahead suggestions, and DDoS-protected rate limiting.

Fork-Friendly Architecture

~5,000 lines of Go — deliberately small, deliberately clean. Structured so Claude Code can read the entire project, understand its architecture, and extend it. Need a new content type? Ask Claude to add one.


Everything you need to run a website

LightCMS isn’t just an AI integration — it’s a complete content management system with all the features you’d expect, plus the ones you wouldn’t.

Templates
Define reusable content types with custom fields — text, richtext, image, date, select
Static HTML
Pre-rendered pages for fast loads. No runtime templating overhead.
Versioning
Full history on every page and theme. Diff comparison, one-click revert, version pinning.
Tags & Snippets
Freeform content tagging, reusable HTML snippets, and lc:query directives for dynamic index pages.
Collections
Auto-generated paginated listing pages filtered by category.
Folders
Hierarchical URL organization for clean content structure.
Themes
Colors, fonts, border radius, custom CSS, header/footer HTML — all versioned with pinning support.
Assets
Upload and serve images, documents, CSS, JS — organized by folder. Import directly from URL.
Redirects
301/302 redirect rules managed from the admin panel or via API.
Content Preview
Render pages before publishing. Preview unsaved edits with field overrides and validation warnings.
Admin Panel
Full web UI at /cm for traditional content management.
Search & Replace
Site-wide or scoped text replacement with preview before execution. Filter by folder, template, or category.

A CMS for the age of agents

If AI agents are becoming the primary way we interact with software, then the systems we use to manage our digital presence need to be designed for agents — not just for humans clicking through admin panels.

LightCMS was built entirely through conversation with Claude Code — not as a novelty, but as proof of a new way of working. Every feature was described in natural language and implemented by an AI agent. The human provided the vision, the architecture, and the design decisions. The agent handled the implementation.

But the real point isn’t that it was built this way — it’s that it’s designed to keep being built this way. The codebase follows consistent patterns, uses clear naming, and maintains a structure that AI agents navigate fluently. Fork it, point Claude Code at it, and start describing your product. The agent already understands the patterns and builds on top of them naturally.

The gap between intention and implementation has collapsed. Your website is a conversation.


Lightweight by design — Go, MongoDB, Fly.io

Backend: Go 1.24, gorilla/mux, MongoDB Atlas
Database: MongoDB Atlas (free tier works great)
Deploy: Fly.io, Docker, or any server
Security: CSRF, bcrypt, SSRF prevention, ReDoS protection, API rate limiting, RBAC, audit logging

Hosting costs go from hundreds of dollars a year to a few dollars a month. The free MongoDB Atlas tier handles most sites. Fly.io deploys in minutes with the included configuration.


v3.0 — 59 MCP Tools, Dynamic Index Pages, Tags & Snippets

Content tagging, reusable HTML snippets, lc:query directives for auto-updating index pages, cascade regeneration, and XSS fix. Read the full version history →

See it in production

This very website — metavert.io — runs on LightCMS. Every page, every concept article, every search result is managed through the system you’re reading about.


Get started — clone, configure, ship

Clone the repo, set your MongoDB connection string, and you’re live. Connect Claude Code via MCP and manage everything through conversation. The README covers quick start, MCP setup, OAuth configuration, multi-user setup, and deployment.

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