PlatformKit Docs

How the platform works — for the people who edit a site and the people who build one.

Running a site

Content

Selling

Bookings

Community

Marketing

Settings

Using a site

Building a site

Architecture

The three layers — the kit, the theme, a site — the rules that decided every placement, and how the repository is laid out.

2 min

The three deployment shapes

A site ships in three shapes — static, git and cloud — and which features each one carries is declared in build/modes.mjs and derived from the code rather than remembered.

7 min

Your first site

Create a PlatformKit site, install its dependencies, and run it locally or from its own repository.

3 min

Configuration

Every key of platformkit.config.js, what it registers, and where the kit reads it.

8 min

Declarations and state

The one question that decides where anything lives, the manifest every table appears in, and the checks that make the wrong answer impossible.

4 min

Modules

The fifteen switches, what each turns on, and what the deploy asks for when it is on.

13 min

The content pipeline

How markdown becomes the site — velite, the collections and their fields, the published rule, the post-steps, and a site's own collections.

7 min

Strings

The rule that no user-facing word lives in a component, the scopes, the merge, the grammar, the helpers, and the one tooling hazard.

2 min

Looks and landing sections

One design, a palette per look, skins, and how a section type is three things that must agree.

11 min

The theme and overrides

The theme's manifest, the virtual modules the plugin answers, replacing a component by name, and the /app shell.

4 min

The database

A declared schema instead of migrations — the files, the plan, renames, the destructive guard, the assembled supabase tree, and the local reset.

24 min

Edge functions

Every function the kit ships, what calls it, what it trusts, and how they run locally.

13 min

Dev, build and deploy

The dev server and the local stack, the production build, and the deploy — with the environment checks that refuse it whole.

22 min

Testing

What platformkit test runs, the phone probe, screenshots before reporting, and the specs as the edge of what is verified.

25 min

The spec workflow

How PlatformKit requirements are proposed, implemented, verified and recorded with OpenSpec.

1 min

Commerce internals

The offers as files, Stripe made to match, the checkout, the ledger, the mock, guest checkout, memberships' switching, and print orders.

18 min

Emails and funnels internals

The designs' compile and fill, the auth emails, the funnel grammar, the audience query, the runner, identity and tracking, and chat prompts.

7 min

The chats and push, internally

The coaching chat's tables and policies, the support desk's function and its live channel, the push triggers, and the two queues the staff answer from.

17 min

Encrypted channels

A channel the server cannot read — what it costs, how a room is sealed, where the keys live, and what goes dark.

8 min

Comments

One conversation system for anything — an article, a wiki page, a book, a product, an event — on the page, in the community as a forum thread, or embedded on somebody else's site at Disqus's own address.

12 min

Forms internals

The document, the parser and its model, the vendored parts of forms.md, the runner, the function, the embed, the builder's writer.

8 min

Bots, tools and commands

An agent loop that survives its own function — durable, resumable, cancellable and budgeted — with bots, tools and slash commands declared as markdown, and the kit's own customer-service bot.

48 min

Votes and reactions

Two ways of answering something without writing a reply — an emoji and a judgement — for a comment and for a message in a room, from one pair of tables and one rule.

3 min

Content models internals

The model record and its grammar, one derivation for velite and the admin, the rules module over validatorjs, the entry check, the builder's endpoints, the pages, the JSON, the section.

6 min

Analytics from any site: PostHog's SDKs and the script

Any official PostHog SDK pointed at this site, or one script with PostHog's API; the door every event goes through; a site's own events and sources in the config.

5 min

The content API, Contentful's

Every collection and model on a site served as Contentful's Delivery, Preview, GraphQL, Sync and Images APIs, and in cloud mode written through the Management API with its webhooks, under keys — an open-source Contentful any Contentful client reads and writes with the host swapped. The guide; the reference lists every route, argument and field.

10 min

The Forms API, Typeform's

A site's forms served as Typeform's Create (read, and written in cloud mode), Responses, Webhooks and Insights APIs, and Typeform's embed pointed at the site — the guide; the reference lists every route, argument and field.

6 min

The Scheduling API, cal.com's

A site's sessions served as cal.com's API v2 — event types, slots, bookings, schedules, webhooks — a booking page for cal.com's embed, and the kit's own cal.com client pointed at the site; the guide. The reference lists every route, argument and field.

5 min

The Store API, Shopify's

A site's store served as Shopify's Storefront API — products, collections and the cart at Shopify's endpoint under a public token — with a cart's checkout landing in the site's own bag; the guide. The reference lists every type and field served.

5 min

The Support API, Chatwoot's

The support desk served as Chatwoot's Client and Application APIs with webhooks, Chatwoot's website snippet mounting the site's widget on any page, and window.$chatwidget; the guide. The reference lists every route and field.

5 min

The community as a Matrix homeserver

The site's spaces and channels served as Matrix's Client-Server API, so Element and every other Matrix client works against it — how it is built, how a session stays the person's own, and what is deliberately absent.

5 min

The social network

A page per person, follows, a timeline and posts that each say who may read them — closed to the site's own people by default, and served to Bluesky's app and every atproto client over the same tables.

18 min

Print production

From a book's block to files at the printer — the editions, the typesetting, the covers, the EPUB, the printers behind one shape, the registry, and the store's pictures.

14 min

Spoken books

The text-to-speech pipeline — made locally, named by the text, stored in the bucket, generated in the browser where missing — and its rules.

5 min

Reference

CLI commands

PlatformKit commands for developing, testing, building and deploying sites.

3 min

Environment variables

Every setting, where it is read, and which the deploy refuses to run without.

19 min

Config keys

platformkit.config.js in one table, with defaults.

7 min

Frontmatter by collection

Every field of every shared content record, as the files hold them and the admin edits them.

22 min

File map

Where things are — in a site, in the kit, in the theme — and the handful of places that are generated rather than written.

4 min

The content API reference

Every route, argument, operator, field, header and error of the Contentful-compatible content API a site serves, the Management API's writes and webhooks included — the reference; the guide is under Building a site.

9 min

The Forms API reference

Every route, argument, field, header and error of the Typeform-compatible Forms API a site serves — the reference; the guide is under Building a site.

5 min

The Scheduling API reference

Every route, argument, field, header and error of the cal.com-compatible Scheduling API a site serves — the reference; the guide is under Building a site.

5 min

The Store API reference

Every type, field, mutation and error of the Shopify-compatible Store API a site serves, the products' mapping and the cart's rules — the reference; the guide is under Building a site.

5 min

The Support API reference

Every route, field, event and error of the Chatwoot-compatible Support API a site serves, the snippet and window.$chatwidget — the reference; the guide is under Building a site.

5 min

The Matrix API reference

Every endpoint, id shape, error code and table of the Matrix Client-Server API a site serves — the reference; the guide is under Building a site.

7 min

The atproto API reference

Every method, identity path, token and refusal of the atproto server a site with the social network serves — the reference; the guide is under Building a site.

5 min

Suppliers

The one interface anything that makes or sends a thing wears, and how a site adds its own.

4 min