Getting Started

Contentrain AI is an open-source content governance infrastructure that lets AI agents manage your project's content through Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools.

Why Contentrain AI?

You've shipped your landing page. 47 components, 500+ hardcoded strings. Now the founder says "we need Turkish" and the marketer wants to A/B test the hero copy. You're looking at a week of grep-and-replace.

This is the content problem every frontend team hits:

• Headless CMS platforms need dashboards, API calls, and manual copy-paste between systems
• Git-based CMS tools store content but have no idea what's in your components
• Hardcoded strings scattered across 47 files — no single source of truth, no translation path

Contentrain AI takes a different approach:

Tell your AI agent what you need. It scans your code, extracts strings into structured content models, patches your source files with i18n references, and opens a review UI — all through Git, all type-safe, zero vendor lock-in.

You: "Extract the hardcoded strings from my landing page and translate to Turkish"
Agent: scans 47 files → finds 523 strings → classifies → creates models → writes content → patches source
You: review in UI → approve → content is live in 2 languages

Bring Your Own Agent (BYOA)

Contentrain doesn't ship its own AI. Your IDE agent (Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, or any MCP-compatible agent) is the intelligence layer. Contentrain provides 13 deterministic MCP tools that any agent can call. No AI markup in your code, no proprietary syntax — just Git files and a typed SDK.

The Content Pipeline

Agent generates → MCP validates → Human reviews → Git commits → SDK serves

Every step is auditable. Every change is a git diff. Nothing reaches production without your approval.

Quick Start

1. Initialize your project

npx contentrain init

This creates .contentrain/ in your project root with config.json, model definitions, and content directories.

2. Add MCP to your IDE

Add Contentrain MCP server to your IDE's agent configuration:

Claude Code (.mcp.json)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "contentrain": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["contentrain", "serve", "--stdio"]
    }
  }
}

Cursor (.cursor/mcp.json)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "contentrain": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["contentrain", "serve", "--stdio"]
    }
  }
}

Windsurf

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "contentrain": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["contentrain", "serve", "--stdio"]
    }
  }
}

3. Create your first model

Ask your AI agent:

Create a hero section model with title, subtitle, and CTA fields

The agent calls contentrain_model_save and creates:

.contentrain/
  models/hero-section.json
  content/marketing/hero-section/en.json

4. Add content

Add content to the hero section: title is "Build faster with AI",
subtitle is "Content governance for modern web projects"

5. Generate the SDK client

npx contentrain generate

This creates a typed client at .contentrain/client/ with #contentrain imports:

import { singleton } from '#contentrain'

const hero = singleton('hero-section').locale('en').get()
console.log(hero.title) // "Build faster with AI"

6. Start the review UI

npx contentrain serve

Open http://localhost:3333 to browse models, content, validation results, and pending branches.

Packages

All Contentrain packages are published on npm and ready to use:

Package	Description	Install
@contentrain/mcp	13 MCP tools for AI agents	pnpm add @contentrain/mcp
contentrain	CLI (init, serve, generate, validate)	npx contentrain init
@contentrain/query	Prisma-pattern query SDK	pnpm add @contentrain/query
@contentrain/types	Shared TypeScript types	pnpm add @contentrain/types
@contentrain/rules	AI agent quality rules	pnpm add @contentrain/rules
@contentrain/skills	AI agent workflow skills	pnpm add @contentrain/skills

What's Next?

• Core Concepts — Understand models, content kinds, and the agent-driven workflow
• MCP Tools — Explore all 13 MCP tools available to your agent
• Normalize Flow — Extract hardcoded strings from your codebase
• Framework Integration — Set up Contentrain with Vue, Nuxt, Next.js, Astro, or SvelteKit

Contentrain Studio

For team collaboration, visual content review, and CDN delivery, check out Contentrain Studio — the hosted governance UI that connects to your Git repo.