What is instatic?

Instatic is a self-hosted content management system, an alternative to platforms like Webflow or WordPress. You run it on your own server, and it gives you a visual editor, content engine, and publisher all in one place. The core idea is that instead of stitching together a separate CMS, framework, host, form service, and image CDN, you use one server that handles the whole thing. It stores data in either SQLite or Postgres. The visual editor lets you design pages on a real canvas. You can place several breakpoint frames side by side and edit desktop and mobile views together. A built-in system called Core Framework handles design tokens. You define one brand color and it generates a full scale of tints and shades. Type scales are fluid and adjust with the viewport, and a utility-class generator creates a small CSS file with only the classes you actually use. Your design system lives as data, so changing one token updates every page that uses it. Building pages involves modules like containers, text, images, buttons, and forms. You drag them onto the canvas and nest them as needed. Visual Components are reusable pieces with typed parameters and named slots, and editing one updates every instance across the site. Templates handle shared layouts like headers and footers, and Loops repeat a layout over collections such as posts or media. Forms are native to the CMS, and submissions land in your own data tables without needing a third-party form service. Instatic includes an AI agent that can edit pages based on text descriptions. It builds real, editable nodes on the canvas instead of producing screenshots or raw code. It writes semantic HTML and CSS through the same import pipeline you would use for pasted markup. You can bring your own model, with support for Claude, OpenAI, OpenRouter, or local Ollama. The pages Instatic produces are plain semantic HTML and compact CSS. There is no framework runtime or leftover editor markup in the final output. The site loads like a static file because, most of the time, it is one. The full README is longer than what was shown.