Mockingbird Example: North Star Outfitters

A self-contained example site demonstrating Project Mockingbird - a local YAML-based CM shim that runs Sitecore Content SDK projects without a full XM Cloud stack (no CM, SQL Server, SOLR, Identity Server).

The site is North Star Outfitters, a fictional outdoor-gear company. It exercises the kinds of templates and components a real customer site would have - a home page, a handful of landings, and detail pages of several different shapes (products, guided trips, retail stores, field-guide articles).

What this example demonstrates

• 50 content pages across a single Headless SXA site: 1 home + 1 about + 1 contact + 6 landings (Hiking, Climbing, Paddling, Trips, Stores, Field Notes) + 41 detail pages.
• 4 detail-page shapes, each with its own template + matching React component: Product, Trip, Store, Article.
• All-API authoring - no hand-written YAML. Content was authored against Mockingbird's HTTP API (POST /api/items, PUT /api/items/{id}) from Node scripts.
• Project configured with two content layers - a platform layer for templates, renderings, and site shape; a content layer for the actual page content + media library. Items that belong to both layers (e.g. Home) deduplicate by ID at runtime.
• Modern head app - Next.js App Router with Content SDK 2.1, Tailwind v4 plus custom BEM CSS.

Stack

Four containers, Linux only:

Service	Image	Role
traefik	traefik:v3.0	TLS-terminating reverse proxy.
mockingbird	projectmockingbird/mockingbird:latest	Content-authoring server + GraphQL layout endpoint.
rendering	locally built from headapps/mockingbird/	Next.js head app in dev mode.
hostswriter	rahnemann/windows-hosts-writer:2.1-linux	Keeps northstaroutfitters.local resolvable on the Windows host.

That's the whole stack. No CM, SQL Server, EDB, marketplace, identity, or Solr - that is the point of running against Mockingbird.

Quick start

Prereqs: Docker Desktop (Linux containers), PowerShell, Node 24+ (only needed for the helper scripts in scripts/).

# One-time: install a local mkcert CA and emit a SAN cert
.\start.ps1 -Init

# Bring the stack up
.\start.ps1

# Stop everything
.\stop.ps1

Endpoints once the stack is up:

• Site: https://northstaroutfitters.local
• Mockingbird UI: https://mockingbird.northstaroutfitters.local
• Traefik dashboard: http://localhost:18080

After that, /api/status reports state: ready and the site renders.

Repository layout

config.mockingbird            project registry; declares the two layers (platform + content)
sitecore.json                 platform layer SCS root
authoring/
  items/
    *.module.json             platform modules (tenant + site shape)
    items/                    serialized templates, renderings, settings, presentation
content/
  sitecore.json               content layer SCS root
  *.module.json               content modules (pages + media)
  items/                      serialized page content + media library
headapps/
  mockingbird/                Next.js head app (App Router, Content SDK 2.1, Tailwind v4)
docker/                       compose file, rendering Dockerfile, traefik config, mkcert helper
scripts/                      (gitignored) authoring helpers - generate-pages, fetch-media, ...
start.ps1 / stop.ps1          stack operators
RUNBOOK.md                    operator-facing daily ops + troubleshooting

For daily operations, restart-when matrices, and recovery sequences (Mockingbird cache poisoning, Next.js dev-cache wipes, project-state loss), see RUNBOOK.md.

Origins

This repository was bootstrapped from Sitecore's xmcloud-starter-js template and then specialized for Mockingbird: the examples/ directory was removed, an empty Content SDK app was generated at headapps/mockingbird/, the docker stack was retargeted at Mockingbird, and the site shape + content were built up via Mockingbird's HTTP API. Some upstream artifacts (CI configs, AI-assistant rules, contribution guides, etc.) remain in the tree from the original template and are not actively maintained here.

License

See LICENSE.MD.