ai-cms

It is a dependency, not a framework you live inside. A site repo installs a pinned version, keeps its own content, its own site.css, and its own prompt overrides, and upgrades the engine on its own schedule.

npm install && npm run dev

• ARCHITECTURE.md: the system. Repo shapes, the render and media pipelines, the validation gate, the Claude Code layer, git and deploy, and the seams left for multi-tenancy.
• CONTENT-MODEL.md: the page format, the block schema system, and the component catalogue mapped to the shared design system.
• ACCESSIBILITY.md: how AAA is enforced. What the machine checks, what a person has to attest, and how attestations expire.
• COMPONENTS.md: the component library. What ships with the engine, what a site keeps, and the test that separates them.
• MEDIA.md: images. The sidecar, how widths are derived from the component slot, and how to override that by hand.
• FONTS.md: bringing a site's own face. Self-hosting, the licence gate, and subsetting.
• DEPLOY.md: the pipeline. Why production requires a passing gate and a preview does not.
• BUDGETS.md: what a page weighs, measured from the build rather than from a browser.
• MARKUP.md: what pristine HTML means concretely. The class rule, and the audit proposing a v3 of the shared stylesheet.
• SITE-CONTEXT.md: how a site keeps the decisions, rejections, and vocabulary that git does not record, so a new session inherits them.
• AGENT-INTERFACE.md: the standing rules every command, error, and schema follows so an LLM can work here.
• TRANSLATION.md: the locale dimension, how a translation goes stale, and what translation costs the rest of the system.
• INGEST.md: taking an existing site of under fifty pages and rebuilding it in this format, including how its brand colours become token overrides that clear 7:1.
• ROADMAP.md: build order, with gtfs.media as the acceptance test.

site-repo/
  package.json        pins the engine version; `cms` resolves from node_modules
  src/
    content/<locale>/ markdown pages, one file per URL
    media/            original images with alt-text sidecars
    assets/           site.css, fonts, favicon, anything served verbatim
    data/             site.yml, nav.yml, fonts.yml, strings.<locale>.yml
    generators/       modules that turn a data file into blocks
    layouts/          override only, empty on most sites
    partials/         override only
    components/       override only
  docs/components/    the human component reference, generated
  .cms/
    prompts/          site-specific prompt overrides, not full prompts
    budgets.json      performance, font, and site.css budgets
    media.lock.json   image manifest
    translations.lock.yml
    conformance.yml   the AAA attestation ledger
  .claude/            generated skill and hook config, no logic
  public/             build output, gitignored

Sites link cdn.fivepaths.com/microsite/v2/base.css and add a short site.css. The engine reads both sheets to build the class allowlist the renderer is held to, so the markup can only use classes the CSS actually defines. Design rules live in DESIGN_GUIDE.md in the fivepaths-cdn repo and copy rules in its WRITING_GUIDE.md. Both are fed to the editing agent as prompt layers.