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 107 tools covering everything: create content, manage templates, upload assets, customize themes, handle redirects, bulk-create and bulk-update hundreds of pages at once, build dynamic index pages, and run multi-pair regex search-and-replace across your site — all through natural language. Say “create a blog post about machine learning” and it’s live. Say “clear the badge field on all 125 Concept Pages” and it’s done in one call.
MCP Server — 107 Tools
Complete website control through natural language. Content, templates, assets, theme, config, redirects, folders, collections, snippets, search, bulk ops, versioning — all exposed as MCP tools. Supports stdio (Claude Code) and HTTP streamable (Cowork, Claude Desktop) transports.
Wiki-Like Markup
Wikilinks auto-resolve to anchors and update on rename. include:name embeds reusable snippets inline. {{.lc_toc}} generates a table of contents. Markdown field type with GFM. Auto heading IDs for deep-linking.
Dynamic Index Pages
Embed lc:query directives in template layouts to build auto-updating index pages filtered by tag, category, folder, or template. Pages regenerate automatically when tagged content is published or changed.
Bulk & Programmatic SEO
Create 100 pages per call with bulk_create_content (with upsert). Update 100 items at once with bulk_update_content. Multi-pair search-and-replace in O(pages). Paginated content listing. Conditional republish skips unchanged pages. Built for 2,000+ page sites.
Content Forks
Fork any page to a named workspace for safe experimentation — edit and preview without touching live content. Fork copies live at the same URL path in an isolated namespace. Discard when done or promote changes back to the live page. Works with the full MCP toolset.
Content Templates
Define reusable content types with custom fields — text, textarea, richtext, image, date, select, and markdown. Seven built-in templates (Blog Post, Concept Page, Homepage, and more). Template layouts use Go html/template with lc:query, snippets, and wikilink support.
Static HTML Generation
Published pages are pre-rendered to static HTML files — no runtime templating, no database queries per request. Pages regenerate automatically on publish, template layout changes, or theme updates. Conditional republish uses SHA-256 hashing to skip unchanged pages.
Asset Library
Upload images, documents, CSS, and JS files with extension and MIME type validation. Organize into folders. Import assets directly from external URLs. Reference assets in templates and content fields by path. Full MCP tooling for upload, list, and delete.
Themes & Content Versioning
Control colors, fonts, border radius, custom CSS, and header/footer HTML — all through MCP or the admin panel. Full version history on every content item and theme snapshot. Diff comparison, one-click revert, and version pinning for stability.
Multi-User RBAC & Audit Log
Four roles — admin, editor, contributor, viewer — with permissions enforced on every API endpoint and admin page. Per-user API keys inherit role permissions. Inline hashtag detection auto-tags pages. Full audit log of every change with user attribution and 365-day retention.
Content Approvals & Discussions
Configurable approval workflows triggered by contributor, folder, template, or tag. Sequential or concurrent approver modes. Inline threaded discussion on every content item with @mention autocomplete. Contributor role holds content in a pending queue until an editor or admin approves.
Hybrid Search
Full-text exact matching fused with semantic vector search (Voyage AI embeddings) via reciprocal rank fusion. Configurable structural ranking, title boosting, typeahead suggestions. DDoS-protected with rate limiting. End-user search API ready to wire into your site frontend.
AI Chat Widget
Embeddable floating chat bubble that lets visitors ask questions in natural language. Queries run hybrid semantic+fulltext search, then stream through Claude Haiku for synthesized answers. Add to any page with a single <script> tag. Works without an Anthropic API key as a graceful search-in-chat fallback. Configurable via admin UI; dedicated rate limiting keeps AI costs predictable.
Regex Search & Replace
Site-wide or scoped find-and-replace with optional RE2 regex. Multi-pair mode applies all replacements in a single pass per page. Scope by folder, template, category, or content IDs. Always preview before executing. Capture group references ($1, $2) in replace strings. Input validation prevents ReDoS.
Site Organization
Hierarchical folders for clean URL structure. Paginated collection pages auto-generated by category. Freeform tagging on every content item. 301/302 redirect rules managed via API or admin panel. Reusable HTML snippet library for shared UI components.
Security Hardening
CSRF protection, bcrypt cost=12, SSRF prevention, path traversal guards, API rate limiting (300/min + 20/sec burst) with escalating lockout, file type validation, 10MB request body cap. Configurable markdown_script_policy controls whether editors may use raw scripts — all/admin_only/none. Per-page locking prevents concurrent update races. API keys require user association.
Built-in Analytics
Hour-by-hour uptime monitoring, unique visitor tracking, page view counts, referrer tracking (with bot/non-bot breakdown), browser/device donut chart. Per-page analytics with referrer drill-down. Buffered writes (30s flush) for zero performance impact. 90-day retention with TTL auto-cleanup.
Fork-Friendly Architecture
~5,000 lines of Go — deliberately small, deliberately clean. Consistent patterns and naming that AI agents navigate fluently. Fork it, point Claude Code at it, and start describing your product. Built entirely through conversation with Claude Code as proof of the approach.
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.
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
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.
v6.1.1 — Bulk Ops, Analytics & Security Hardening
Bulk create/update content at scale, multi-pair search-and-replace, content upsert, paginated listing, built-in analytics dashboard, referrer tracking, and comprehensive security hardening. 107 MCP tools total. 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.
MIT License · Copyright 2026 Metavert LLC · Privacy Policy · Read the announcement