The whole web stack in one binary
Web server, CMS and SQLite in a single self-contained file. No runtime, no dependencies: download, unpack, run.
$ gunzip cms-amd64.gz $ mv cms-amd64 cms && chmod +x cms $ ./cms def-help $ ./cms First run in an empty folder lays down the example site and prints the admin password.
Other ways to install
Same binary, same fixed on-disk layout. Pick what fits your host.
Docker
Multi-arch images on Docker Hub. Production tag is built from scratch and weighs a few MB; the -alpine tag adds a shell for debugging. The site lives on the volume.
$ docker pull sqliteonlinecom/cmsnap:latest $ docker run --rm -v mysite:/site sqliteonlinecom/cmsnap:latest /cms def-help # admin login and generated password $ docker run -d --name mysite -v mysite:/site -p 80:8080 sqliteonlinecom/cmsnap:latest
Demo sites
Four starter skeletons, each one a base for a whole class of real sites. Engine and admin shell are the same; each skeleton showcases a different slice of the engine. The default starter site is not listed here: the binary unpacks it itself on first run. Pick the shape closest to your site, unpack it into an empty folder next to the binary and run: $ ./cms
Realty
Catalog, detail card and a lead form. The same shape covers car dealers, product showcases and hotels.
Signature: a complete photo gallery, from a clickable strip on the public card to an admin widget with drag-and-drop ordering and in-browser webp compression. Plus three catalogs (houses, flats, commercial) with different field sets.
Event
Schedule, speaker cards and registration. The same shape covers festivals, meetups and weddings.
Signature: combinable URL filters (?day=2&speaker=...) over indexed columns, and two date masks over a single timestamp column: short on the site, full in the admin.
Salon
Price list and a booking form. The same shape covers clinics, car services and tutors.
Signature: the booking dropdown is rendered from the same view rows as the price table, so there is no separate option list to maintain. The home page collects several views on one route.
No-DB
A brochure site running with no database at all. The class covers cafes, barbers, lawyers and portfolios.
Signature: the full engine without a database or admin panel: pages, layouts and reusable partials, in-memory cache with zstd and 304, TLS with Let’s Encrypt. No write path exists, so neither do its attack surfaces.
Generate a site with AI
A CMSnap-LITE site is just settings.json, templates and seed data, no engine code, which makes it an ideal target for AI generation. ai_site_guide.md is a ready-made system prompt that teaches any capable model the whole schema: tables, views and forms, hbs templates, seeds, access roles and error pages. Describe your business in any language, get back a complete site, unpack it next to the binary and run: $ ./cms
Coding agents
Tools that can read URLs themselves: Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor, Windsurf and similar. Paste this one line, replace the brackets, and the agent fetches the guide, generates the files and writes them to disk on its own.
Read the CMSnap-LITE site generation guide at https://sqliteonline.com/cmsnap/dl/ai_site_guide.md and follow it exactly. Then generate a complete site for: [describe your business, audience, language and visual style]. Write the full file tree into the current folder.
Chat assistants
For a plain chat without web access (ChatGPT, Claude, a local model), paste the guide itself. The button fetches the full guide and copies it together with a task line to fill in; on repeat clicks it copies instantly from memory.
# CMSnap-LITE Universal Site Generation Prompt
You are an expert web architect, CMS schema designer, frontend designer, and content strategist. Generate a complete, production-quality website for CMSnap-LITE for any requested country, language, industry, brand, or audience.
… about 1,300 more lines. The Copy button fetches the whole guide.