EmDash

EmDash is an open source, full-stack TypeScript CMS built on Astro and Cloudflare. It takes the extensibility, admin UX, and plugin ecosystem that made WordPress dominant and rebuilds them on serverless, type-safe foundations — no PHP required.

EmDash is described as the spiritual successor to WordPress. It offers similar features — custom content types, drafts, revisions, scheduling, taxonomies, menus, and live preview — but improves on WordPress in three key areas: plugin security (plugins run in isolated sandboxes instead of having full system access), structured content (Portable Text instead of serialized HTML), and developer experience (TypeScript end-to-end instead of PHP).

No. EmDash is a fully functional CMS whether you use AI or not. However, it ships with a built-in MCP server that exposes content, schema, media, taxonomies, and revisions to AI tools like Claude and OpenCode. This lets you delegate routine content tasks to an agent — turning chores that were tedious in other CMSs into automated workflows.

WordPress plugins have full access to the database, filesystem, and user data — 96% of WordPress security vulnerabilities come from plugins. EmDash solves this by running plugins in isolated Cloudflare Worker sandboxes via Dynamic Worker Loaders. Each plugin declares a capability manifest (e.g. read:content, email:send) and can do exactly that — nothing more.

EmDash runs best on Cloudflare (D1 database + R2 storage + Workers), but it is not locked to it. It uses portable abstractions at every layer — Kysely for SQL and the S3 API for storage — so it also works with SQLite, Turso, PostgreSQL, AWS S3, or local files on any Node.js server. Note: sandboxed plugins require a Cloudflare paid account (Dynamic Workers).

The fastest way is to try the playground for an instant sandbox. To scaffold a new project locally, run:

npm create emdash@latest

EmDash ships with three starter templates — Blog, Marketing, and Portfolio — so you can pick the closest match and customize from there. You can also deploy directly to Cloudflare with the one-click button in the GitHub repo.