cairncms

cairncms

cairncms is the distributable CLI for CairnCMS, a self-hosted headless CMS that serves a REST and GraphQL API with a no-code admin app on top of an SQL database. Installing this package gives you a single binary that runs the API, serves the admin app, and handles database bootstrap and migrations.

Install

npm install -g cairncms

Node 22 or newer is required. pnpm and yarn work too.

Quick start

For a quick local run against SQLite:

export KEY=$(openssl rand -hex 16)
export SECRET=$(openssl rand -hex 32)
export DB_CLIENT=sqlite3
export DB_FILENAME=./cairncms.db

cairncms bootstrap
cairncms start

• KEY and SECRET sign and encrypt auth tokens. Any random strings work; keep them stable across restarts.
• DB_CLIENT selects the database driver. Each driver expects its own vendor-specific variables (DB_FILENAME for SQLite, DB_HOST / DB_USER / DB_PASSWORD for networked databases, etc.).
• bootstrap runs first-time setup: applies migrations and creates the admin tables and default admin user. Safe to run on an empty database; skip it on subsequent starts.
• start serves the API and admin app.

After start, the admin app is available at http://localhost:8055.

Supported databases

• SQLite 3
• PostgreSQL (current release and 10.x LTS)
• MySQL 8 and MySQL 5.7
• MariaDB

Documentation

See the CairnCMS documentation for configuration, authentication, extension development, and API reference details.

Issues, contributing, security

• Bug reports: GitHub Issues
• Contributing guide: CONTRIBUTING.md
• Security vulnerabilities: security policy or email security@cairncms.dev

License

GPLv3.