seirai-dev/areca-cms

Open-source headless CMS for agencies running many client sites. Content is pulled at build time, with a visual editor, roles per client and an MCP server for AI agents

Summary

Areca CMS is a self-hosted, TypeScript headless CMS designed for agencies managing multiple client websites in one installation. It provides client-specific sites and roles, a draft-to-live publishing workflow, and a TypeScript SDK that lets website builds pull approved content snapshots.

What it is useful for

Areca is useful when clients need to write or approve content without seeing an agency’s other projects. Each client receives separate sites, owners, and editors, while agency administrators can manage everything. The visual editor shows a live site preview and lets editors jump from a page element to the corresponding content field.

Its publishing workflow keeps drafts separate from production: content moves from Draft to Ready, then through Go live. Publishing freezes approved content into a snapshot, which the website pulls during its build. Static sites therefore do not need to query the CMS when visitors request pages. Releases also support scheduling, history, rollback, and health checks; when deployment fails, the previous version remains live.

The repository also includes an MCP server for each site, allowing connected AI agents such as Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor to create drafts under the connected user’s permissions. Other documented capabilities include multilingual content, rich text with code blocks, a media library, and search, social, and structured-data fields. AI-generated suggestions are optional and use OpenRouter.

For teams evaluating the implementation, the repository includes the examples/demo-site project, “Northbound Coffee,” as a complete SDK-based example.

How engineers can use it

The documented quick start requires Docker with Compose v2. Start the CMS and its PostgreSQL, Redis, S3-compatible storage, and test-inbox services with:

git clone https://github.com/seirai-dev/areca-cms.git
cd areca-cms/docker
cp .env.example .env
docker compose up -d --wait

Set the secrets in .env, open http://localhost:3000/setup, and obtain the setup token from docker compose logs cms. The README points to the Docker quick-start and production guides for detailed configuration.

To connect a website, create a client and site in the CMS, then copy its site token into the website project:

pnpm add @areca-cms/site-sdk
pnpm exec areca init

Define collections in areca.config.ts, publish the schema with areca manifest push, and fetch content during the build with areca pull. For an AI coding agent, the README documents npx @areca-cms/skills followed by /areca-quickstart.

Built-in deployment adapters are documented for Dokploy and Cloudflare Pages and Workers. Teams targeting other infrastructure should check the production documentation before adopting it.