Getting started

BearMinion gives you an Astro website you edit by clicking on it. Your content is plain files in your project, the editor only runs on your computer, and what you publish is a static site with no database and no server.

You need Node.js 22.12 or newer.

1. Create your site

npm create bearminion@latest my-site

It asks three things: the folder, the site’s name and its web address. Press Enter to skip the address and set it later in the editor. Then it copies the default template, installs it and makes the first git commit.

pnpm create bearminion, yarn create bearminion and bun create bearminion work the same way and install with that package manager.

Options

Pass options after -- with npm (npm create bearminion@latest my-site -- --yes); pnpm, yarn and bun take them directly.

Option	What it does
--name <name>	The site’s name. Default: from the folder, so my-coffee-shop becomes “My Coffee Shop”
--url <address>	Its public address, such as https://example.com. Used for search engines, the sitemap and link previews
--storybook	Also add Storybook, a workshop for the theme’s components
--pm <manager>	Install with npm, pnpm, yarn or bun. Default: the one you ran
--no-install	Skip installing
--no-git	Skip creating a git repository
-y, --yes	Ask nothing and use the defaults, for scripts and AI agents

The folder must be new or empty. Inside an existing git repository, the site is added as a folder and no new repository is made.

2. Edit it

cd my-site
npm run dev

Open the address it prints (usually http://localhost:4321) and press Ctrl+E (Cmd+E on a Mac) to open the editor.

• Click any text to change it. Select words in a heading to make them bold, italic or a different font.
• Hover a section for its toolbar: move it, add one above or below, duplicate it, open its settings or delete it.
• Use the sidebar for pages, navigation, the footer, colors and site settings.
• Click an image to upload a new one or pick one from the library.

Press Ctrl/Cmd+S to save. The editor writes your changes to content/ and new images to src/assets/uploads/. Until you save, your edits stay in the browser, and they survive a reload.

The editor describes every feature.

3. Put it online

1. Push the folder to a new GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket repository.
2. Import that repository in your host. Every host below detects Astro; if one asks, the build command is npm run build and the output folder is dist.
   • Vercel
   • Netlify
   • Cloudflare
   • Any other static host: run npm run build and upload dist/.
3. In the editor, set your address under Site → URL (if you skipped it when you created the site), save, commit and push. Canonical links, the sitemap and link previews use it.

From then on: edit, save, commit, push. Your host rebuilds the site on every push.

What is in your site

Path	What it is
content/	Your pages (content/pages/*.json) and site settings (content/site.json). The editor writes these; see Content files.
src/assets/uploads/	Your images
src/components/	The theme: sections, header, footer and the building blocks they use. It is your code; change it as you like.
src/lib/content-model.ts	Tells the editor which sections, header and footer layouts and fonts your theme has
astro.config.ts	Astro’s settings, including the bearminion() integration

The editor and its API exist only while npm run dev runs. npm run build leaves them out entirely.

Next

• The editor: everything you can do on the page and in the sidebar
• Building a theme: add a section type, or change the look
• Content files: the JSON the editor writes, for editing by hand or by script