The CMS for you and your agent

EmDash is the spiritual successor to WordPress: an open source, agent-ready, full-stack CMS for Astro

Try it out in our playground

npm create emdash@latest

Or build with an agent

EmDash post editor with a sentence selected under the floating formatting toolbar, and draft changes ready to publish

Capabilities

Build your next blog or microsite today

EmDash combines with Astro to create one end-to-end TypeScript CMS and frontend.

The Astro-native CMS

First-class Astro integration. Define content types in the admin, get TypeScript types generated from your schema, and render every entry on the server from structured JSON.

Content types/Posts3 fields
Titletitle
StringRequiredSearchable
Excerptexcerpt
Text
Contentcontent
PortableTextSearchable
Add field
ModelFields defined in the admin
Posts/EditDraft
Title
Small tools, big impact
Content
The best tools do one thing well.
Publish
EditDrafts, revisions, and preview
emdash-env.d.tsGenerated
21export interface Post {
22 id: string;
23 slug: string | null;
24 status: string;
25 title: string;
26 excerpt?: string;
27 content?: PortableTextBlock[];
28 featured_on_homepage?: boolean;
29 featured_pill_text?: string;
30 featured_pill_tag?: string;
TypeTypes generated from your schema
yoursite.com/blog/small-tools-big-impact
Blog · June 1
Small tools, big impact
Notes on building software that does less, and does it well.
The best tools do one thing well.
RenderAstro pages via getEmDashEntry()

A spiritual WordPress successor

Everything you love about WordPress in a fast, modern admin. Pages, posts, media, menus, widgets, and taxonomies are where you expect them, and the built-in importer brings your content over.

My Site

Content

Pages

Posts

Media

Manage

Comments

Menus

Redirects

Widgets

Sections

Drafts, revisions, and scheduling

Edit drafts while the live page stays untouched. Restore earlier revisions, schedule publishing, and share preview links before anything goes live.

Mar 12

Published

Yesterday

Revision saved

Just now

Draft saved

Publish changes

Publish

Live versionVisitors still see the published version

Draft changesReady to publish now or schedule for later

Publication dateMar 12, 9:00 AM

Created and updated

Built with agents in mind

Every site ships with an MCP server. Connect Claude, Codex, Cursor, or any MCP client to draft, edit, search, and schedule content with the same permissions as your team. Scripts get the same through the REST API and CLI.

Codex
Cursor
Claude
OpenCode
Any MCP client

Claude

Draft a summer sale post for June 1 at 9 AM.

3 tool calls

Check for duplicatessearch

Create draftcontent_create

collection: "posts"data: { title: "Summer sale starts June 1" }

Schedule for June 1content_schedule

Summer sale starts June 1Scheduled for Jun 1, 9:00 AM

Extend with plugins

Add your own block types, admin pages, hooks, storage, and API routes in TypeScript. Every section on this page is a block from this site’s own plugin.

src/plugins/marketing-blocks/index.ts

84{
type: "marketing.capabilities",
label: "Capabilities",
description: "Feature bento with illustrations",
// Only the header is editable. Card copy lives in Capabilities.astro,
// next to the illustration it describes.
fields: [
  {

Plugins without the security nightmare

Plugins you install from the admin run in their own isolated sandbox. They see no environment variables or filesystem, and get only the capabilities they declare and you approve.

slack-notifyIsolate

No access

Environment variables
Filesystem
Other plugins’ storage
Undeclared hosts

What people are saying

"The entire functionality of WordPress, and then some."

Matt MullenwegCo-founder at WordPress

"The most interesting thing to happen to content management in years."

Joost de ValkFounder at Yoast

"Getting from zero to a basic design is fast. I mean, really fast."

Brian CoordsDeveloper Advocate at Automattic

Frequently asked questions

What is EmDash?

EmDash is an open source CMS built on Astro and Cloudflare. It gives you a typed schema, a polished admin, and an MCP server so both humans and AI agents can manage your content.

How is it different from other CMSes?

EmDash is Astro-native and self-hosted on your own Cloudflare account. Your schema lives in code, your data lives in D1 and R2, and there is no SaaS backend between you and your content.

Can AI agents really edit content?

Yes. EmDash ships a Model Context Protocol server that exposes content, schema, media, taxonomies, menus, and revisions. Drop it into Claude, OpenCode, or any MCP-aware tool and it just works.

How do I get started?

Open the playground for an instant sandbox, or run npx emdash dev in a fresh Astro project to spin up a local instance with the admin at /_emdash/admin.

Where can I ask questions?

Join the Discord to chat with the team and community, or open an issue on GitHub. The docs cover setup, architecture, and the full API reference.