What Is Chinaski

Chinaski is a self-hosted content management system that publishes websites as plain HTML files. You manage content in a browser-based admin app; a builder turns it into static files; your web server serves them. It is statically generated, has no JavaScript on the public site, no telemetry, and no outside dependencies at runtime: a CMS you can fully own, audit, and even run without an internet connection.

The model: write dynamically, publish statically

Think of it as two halves:

• The admin app is where the work happens: pages, posts, blocks, images, forms, users, settings, all stored in a single SQLite database file, all editable in the browser.
• The builder turns that database into your website: plain HTML files on disk, one copy per language, plus sitemaps, feeds, robots.txt, redirect rules, and security files. Builds are things you trigger (from the dashboard, a webhook, or a command), never silent background magic.

Readers visit your web server, which serves those files directly. The CMS never has to answer reader requests: the site stays online while the CMS is off, loads with zero JavaScript anywhere on the public pages, and the security surface is confined to the admin interface you choose to expose.

Who it’s for

• Agencies running multiple client sites. Each site is a self-contained instance, identical stack, one client per instance, clean audit trail, and no vendor that can take your site hostage.
• Organizations that care about what’s shipped: hospitals, law firms, defense contractors, financial firms, where not having trackers, beacons, or third-party code is the point, not a limitation.
• Operators who need offline capability. Everything installs from the OS’s own package list; after installation, no outbound network connection is ever required, truly air-gap capable operations included.

What it’s deliberately not

Said plainly by the project itself:

• No drag-and-drop visual editor: body text is a rich-text editor; everything else is structured forms. A visual builder is on the roadmap.
• No plugin ecosystem. There is no hook architecture, no marketplace, no third-party churn; fewer parts, more predictability.
• No Postgres. One database file per site, single-tenant by design; a multi-tenant tier is on the roadmap, not shipped.
• Not hands-off hosting. You run your own server and own the database, the backups, and the uptime story.

What you get out of the box

• Pages and posts with revisions, scheduling, drafts, SEO fields, and translations per language
• Reusable content blocks and stack-based composition, with a single editor that treats everything consistently
• Forms with spam protection, notifications, and webhooks: handled live, proxied through your static site
• A media library with automatic responsive image sizes
• Password-gated pages, private documents with token-protected access, real search pages
• Multi-language sites with per-language sitemaps and redirect handling
• An audit log of every change, system event log, a background job queue, and a full REST API (plus AI-assistant tooling)
• Automatic backups with verification, scheduled builds, security hardening, and an installer that sets restrictive permissions from step one

The published output is plain, standard web files: HTML that renders forever, feeds, metadata files, and static redirects; no frameworks that expire, no build tools required on the served side.

Where it fits

Pick Chinaski when: you manage several sites as an agency; your organization requires an auditable, minimal, network-independent stack; you want content security and clear logs; or you value owning the whole pipeline (server to output) with boring, stable technology you can read start to finish.

Look elsewhere when you need: pixel-drag visual page building, a plugin ecosystem, one shared database serving many tenants, or zero operational involvement; the project says those plainly in its own documentation.

The short version

Chinaski is a self-hosted, deliberately small CMS that writes your site as static files so that publishing is simple, fast to serve, safe by construction, and permanently yours. The CMS is a workshop; the result is a building that stands on its own.