Timber is a git-backed static CMS — a lightweight, friendly-to-edit alternative to other static site generators that produces a static website deployed to GitHub Pages, but is still editable in a browser. Site owners define their own content types, edit content in an in-browser editor, and publish by committing to a GitHub repo. Self-hosted, single-tenant, no database, no server-side app.
| System | Needs a server | Easy editing | Text-based markdown editing | User Authentication | Vibe coded |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Timber | No* | Yes | Yes | via GitHub | Yes |
| Wordpress | Yes | Yes | No(?) | Built - in | No |
| Hugo / Eleventy / Astro etc | No | No | Yes | depends | No |
*Timber may require a very tiny authentication broker depending on how you want to set up the login flow. The broker can be run for free on Cloudflare as a Cloudflare worker.
| Doc | What it's for |
|---|---|
| INSTALL.md | Set up a hosted site — create a repo from the template, choose a sign-in method, deploy. No local tooling. |
| DEVELOPMENT.md | Run Timber locally or hack on it — run the editor on your machine, build a site by hand, deploy the broker directly. |
| ARCHITECTURE.md | How the pieces fit — repos, packages, the dependency graph, auth modes, the workflows. |
| SPEC.md | The authoritative design and rationale. |
A public website at https://<you>.github.io/<repo>/ plus an in-browser editor co-hosted at
/<repo>/edit/. The editor signs in to GitHub (paste-a-PAT, or a GitHub App via a redirect
or device flow — see INSTALL.md), commits your edits, and a GitHub Action
rebuilds and deploys the site.
packages/— the monorepo:generator(render core),content(content model),cli(Node site build),app(browser editor),github(repo client),oauth-broker(Cloudflare Worker).site-template/— the example site scaffold; mirrored to theTimber-site-templaterepo (edit it here, never there).