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Tapestry

0001. Build Tapestry as a StudioCMS page-type plugin

  • Status: Accepted
  • Date: 2026-10-02

Context

Section titled “Context”

We want Drupal Canvas-style visual page building on Astro + StudioCMS. StudioCMS (0.6) provides auth, a dashboard, page storage (libSQL, Postgres, MySQL), revisions/diffs, and a plugin API. Its plugin API lets a plugin register page types, each with:

  • a rendererComponent: a module exporting { name, renderer(content) => html, sanitizeOpts }
  • a pageContentComponent: an Astro component rendered inside the dashboard’s page edit form, which saves <textarea name="page-content">.

StudioCMS also has a component registry that replaces registered custom elements in rendered HTML with Astro components on the server.

Decision

Section titled “Decision”

Tapestry is a StudioCMS plugin that registers one page type, tapestry/canvas. The page content is a JSON component tree. Our renderer turns it into HTML that the component registry expands into real Astro components. Our editor component is the Tapestry editor.

Alternatives considered

Section titled “Alternatives considered”
  • Standalone Astro integration with its own storage and admin UI. Full control, but we’d rebuild auth, storage, revisions, and a dashboard: months of work that StudioCMS already does.
  • A different CMS backend (Payload, Keystatic, Decap) plus a custom Astro renderer. Workable, but the user specifically chose StudioCMS, which is Astro-native.
  • Fork StudioCMS. Maintenance burden; plugins are the supported extension point.

Consequences

Section titled “Consequences”
  • We inherit StudioCMS’s storage, auth, permissions, drafts, and diffs for free.
  • We’re bound by StudioCMS’s contracts: content is a string; the renderer returns HTML; the editor communicates through a form field. ADR 0004 covers how we render real components within that.
  • StudioCMS is pre-1.0 and its docs lag its code. We pin versions, check behavior against source, and record findings in research/studiocms-internals.md.
  • Users must add one componentRegistry line, because plugins can’t register components themselves.

Source: docs/decisions/0001-build-as-a-studiocms-page-type-plugin.md (view on GitHub)