Blog EmDash Build turns a prompt into a real Astro site with structured content, media, and an EmDash admin UI.
Today we are releasing and open-sourcing an alpha of EmDash Build, an AI site builder that hosting providers, website builders, and product teams can run themselves and integrate with their own systems. Try the demo today at build.emdashcms.com, or explore the code on GitHub.
If you are building a site today, for yourself or for a client, you may not start in an IDE. You are more likely to start with a chat box and describe to an agent what you want. But once you have something, a simple change can send you back to that prompt box, where you either roll the dice on another generation or spend credits on a one-line edit. EmDash Build creates an EmDash site instead, which brings the full stack: server-rendered Astro pages, a database, media storage, and an admin interface. The agent designs a content model from the brief, fills it through EmDash's built-in MCP server, and writes the pages that display it. After that, you or your customer can edit content in the EmDash admin, schedule posts, or ask the agent to make a larger change.
In EmDash Build, each project gets its own Cloudflare Sandbox, where the agent, built on the Agents SDK, checks its own work in a live preview. Cloudflare Artifacts records the project in git-backed checkpoints so its source and local EmDash state survive when the Sandbox sleeps.
The alpha's current publish flow deploys a validated, read-only snapshot through Workers for Platforms. It does not yet move the site's content and media into a writable production EmDash instance. Production CMS transfer remains in development.
From a blank scaffold to a custom site #
New projects start from a blank EmDash scaffold rather than a pre-designed site. It includes Astro, Tailwind, EmDash, and source-owned accessible primitives, but no content schema or finished design. The agent asks optional questions that materially affect the site's direction, then creates the schema, content, taxonomies, menus, settings, and frontend from the brief. This keeps the content model tied to the site the user actually described. A photography portfolio can have projects, locations, and galleries; a restaurant can have menus, opening hours, and locations. The agent writes the public Astro site around those structures instead of forcing every brief into the same template.
An authoring loop that can recover #
A visitor can start anonymously, answer or skip the interview questions, watch the site take shape in a live preview, and continue refining it in chat. Once the first build is ready, the same project includes an EmDash admin for routine content work.
The BuilderAgent Durable Object owns the conversation, project state, and agent loop. Artifacts checkpoints the site after provisioning, successful changes, and completed turns. If the Sandbox sleeps, EmDash Build restores the established project and restarts its preview rather than replacing it with a clean scaffold.
The CMS token remains in server-side Durable Object storage. Generated code and the Sandbox do not receive Cloudflare account credentials or production CMS credentials.
A reference platform for website builders #
EmDash Build is also a reference platform for hosting providers and product teams that want to offer AI-assisted site creation. The repository documents the provider architecture, self-hosting requirements, operations, and security boundaries.
Providers can connect their own identity, policy, quotas, branding, billing, and deployment systems while keeping EmDash as the editable content layer underneath.
Try the alpha #
The hosted demo is experimental and has no service-level guarantee. Project source and content can be stored for recovery, so do not enter sensitive information.
Try EmDash Build or read the source on GitHub. If you are building a website platform or want to help shape the project, contributions and feedback are welcome.