For developers and agencies

Every Firetend site is an Astro project: content in Markdown files, a design in Astro components, and a static build. Nothing is locked in a database. You can download it at any time and build it anywhere.

Download a site

Owners and developers download a site from Settings → General, under Download this site:

Source (.zip): the whole project at the published version, with every page as Markdown, the images, the design and the settings.
Built site (.zip): the live site's finished pages, ready to upload to any web host, with a Markdown copy of each page, the sitemap, robots.txt and llms.txt. It's available once the site has been published.

The source includes an EXPORT.md at the top that explains how to build and host it. See Workspaces, roles and client access for who has which role.

What's in the project

src/content/: every page, article and entry as a Markdown file, with its fields in the frontmatter. A page is a list of sections.
src/sections/: the site's own section designs, with their fields in src/sections/schema.ts.
src/layouts, src/pages, src/components, src/styles: the rest of the design.
public/ and src/assets/: images and files.
.aicms/site.json: the site's settings. .aicms/brand.md: the brand profile the content agent writes from.
aicms.config.ts: the site type (a local business or a content site) and anything added to it, such as an extra field or a new collection.
AGENTS.md: how the site is organised, its content model and its rules, written for you or for a coding agent.
vendor/: @aicms/astro, Firetend's platform package.

The platform package

@aicms/astro provides the parts every site shares: the sitemap, robots.txt, llms.txt, structured data, the Markdown copies of pages, site search, forms, and the checks. It's installed from the project's own vendor/ folder, so you need no account or registry to build.

As EXPORT.md states, you may use, copy and change the package to build, host and maintain this site, on Firetend or anywhere else. You may not resell it or offer it as part of a service for others.

Build it locally

You need Node.js 22 or later and pnpm. In the project folder:

pnpm install
pnpm dev                 # preview while you work
pnpm build               # the site is written to dist/
pnpm exec aicms check    # the site's own checks

aicms check builds the site and fails on problems: a page with no editable content, an entry without its page, a title tag over 60 characters, a description that's missing or over 160, or two pages sharing a title or description. Any static host can serve dist/.

What stays with Firetend

The download is a copy. The click-to-edit editor, the content and design agents, and hosting are part of Firetend's service and aren't included. Hosting also covers HTTPS, redirects to your main address, and telling search engines about changes. Forms send their messages to Firetend, so on another host you'd connect them to your own form service.

Changes you make to a downloaded copy don't come back into Firetend. To change the site Firetend hosts, use the editor, the content agent, or a design change on the Design page. Owners and developers can also edit an entry's Markdown directly: open its form and switch it from Fields to Source.