Claude Site Starter: an open source Claude Code website template

The problem I wanted to solve

The site you're reading was built entirely with Claude Code. The result is a fast, secure site that I can change with one sentence. No WordPress update on Monday morning, no €99-a-year plugin, no admin panel to keep secure over time.

Getting to that simplicity took trial and error. I invented conventions page after page, repeated workflows that should have been automated from the start, and made a few security mistakes I would rather have avoided. It's the kind of learning you can't really skip on a first project, and it weighs on deadlines and on focus.

When it was time to start over for a client, I wanted to lock the method into a reusable repository. Then I figured this repository could help other consultants, freelancers or small teams who want to build their online presence with Claude Code. That's why Claude Site Starter exists, and you can use it for your personal projects as well as for client work.

What the starter includes

The idea is simple. You clone the repository, run claude in the folder and type /start-new-site. A wizard then asks you the essential questions: your brand name, the page structure you want, the modules to enable (appointment booking, newsletter, analytics) and the target hosting. At the end of the conversation, your project is configured and ready for your first content.

In practice, this is what you get after the wizard:

• A static site ready to deploy, with a home page, a blog, a legal notice and a privacy policy.
• A password-protected staging environment, generated automatically from a GitHub secret.
• Production deployment on the main branch, orchestrated by GitHub Actions and SFTP.
• Hardened HTTP headers (HSTS, strict CSP, anti-clickjacking), preconfigured in a .htaccess file.
• A CLAUDE.md file at the root of the project that documents your non-negotiable rules for every future session with the assistant.

Deliberate technical choices

This starter makes opinionated choices that don't suit every project. I spell them out in detail from the start so you know exactly what to expect, and can decide whether the tool fits your needs or whether you'd be better off looking elsewhere.

No CMS

The starter produces static sites: HTML, CSS and vanilla JavaScript. No database, no admin panel to edit content without touching the code. That's a deliberate choice. If your team publishes content regularly without going through a developer, WordPress or Webflow are better suited. For a consultant's site, a SaaS landing page or a portfolio that changes a few times a month, a CMS isn't necessary.

No framework

No Next.js, no Astro, no Vite. This choice rests on 3 observations from real projects. First, the complexity of a framework isn't justified for a marketing site of about 10 pages. Second, a site with no build step is a site that won't break 3 years later when the dependencies stop being compatible with each other. Finally, Claude Code handles vanilla HTML without mistakes, whereas it sometimes makes subtle errors in a complex TypeScript project. When the tool and the material speak the same language, the output is cleaner.

PHP 8 and SFTP

The starter targets shared hosting at €3 to €5 a month, such as OVH, Infomaniak, o2switch or LWS. It's the least glamorous hosting in the world but the most reliable, and the most affordable for a site that doesn't get millions of visitors a day. Forms and third-party integrations (Brevo, Cal.com, Mailchimp) go through small server-side PHP scripts, which keeps API keys out of the browser and keeps the attack surface minimal.

Brand before code

On its own, the starter provides a working skeleton, with the right technical building blocks and a clean structure. A quality site, though, requires a brand identity defined upfront: typography, palette, logo, photography, copy, editorial direction. The repository's README stresses this point. If you skip the brand step, the result will stay generic whatever tool you use. The starter speeds up the technical part, and the strategic thinking that comes before it remains up to you.

Claude Code as a senior webmaster

This is the part that changes the way you work the most. The starter ships with 10 slash commands that turn Claude Code into a team member who knows your site by heart. At the start of every session, it reads your design system, your conventions and your tone of voice before suggesting anything. It's a bit like hiring a senior webmaster who has read your documentation before joining the meeting.

Each of these commands covers a specific moment in the life of the site:

• /start-new-site: a complete wizard to start a new project from scratch.
• /adopt-existing-site: the same logic, adapted to taking over a site that already exists.
• /brand-setup: the command that creates or updates the brand document that all the others read.
• /new-page: Claude reads the design system and the existing components, then builds the new page by reusing what already exists in the project.
• /new-section: adds a section to an existing page without breaking visual consistency.
• /new-blog-article: an article written in your tone of voice, with an illustration generated by Gemini from a prompt consistent with your palette, a 2-voice TTS podcast in the style of NotebookLM, and the sitemap updated automatically.
• /deploy: the discipline of going from staging to production. The command refuses to push to main without confirmation that staging has been tested.
• /audit-brand: checks the site against the design tokens, the editorial rules, SEO and accessibility.
• /setup-integration: configures a third-party integration (Cal.com, Calendly, Brevo, Mailchimp, GA4, Plausible, Umami).
• /setup-staging-auth: (re)generates the password protection of the staging site.

The most productive work loop, the one I use every day, takes a few steps: I deploy to staging, run Google Lighthouse in Chrome DevTools, copy the opportunities and diagnostics, and paste them into Claude, asking it to fix whatever it can. It proposes, I approve, we test again. Performance, SEO, accessibility, best practices: all of it can be handled in one afternoon, where it would have taken several days without this automation.

Security by default

This is what I wish I'd had 6 months ago. Out of the box, with no extra configuration, the starter includes most of the protections people too often forget when they start a new project under launch pressure.

For HTTP headers, a preconfigured .htaccess enables HSTS, a strict CSP, anti-clickjacking protection, a restrictive Permissions-Policy and a COOP. For staging, the .htpasswd protection is generated automatically by the GitHub workflow from secrets that are never committed to the repository. For API secrets, a dedicated PHP loader reads a server-side .env file that is never committed, never read by Claude and never exposed to the browser.

The starter also includes pre-commit hooks that remind you to review the diffs before pushing, especially when sensitive files are modified. And the documentation devotes an entire chapter to the pitfalls specific to developing with AI: never paste a real key into a prompt, don't grant broad permissions to an unknown skill, and reject the lazy CSP fixes Claude sometimes suggests out of convenience.

As for personal data processed by Claude, the principle is simple. A static marketing site has nothing sensitive in its code. Forms go through server-side PHP scripts that the assistant doesn't read. Secrets are never present in the repository. The .gitignore excludes any .env or .credentials file by default, and the CLAUDE.md document explicitly restates these rules in every session.

Who this starter is for

The starter was designed for independent consultants, freelancers and small teams who have tried WordPress, Webflow or Squarespace and run into their limits: slowness, bloat, monthly bills that pile up, plugins that break at the worst moment. If you're already comfortable with the idea of an AI assistant on the command line, or ready to get into it, you're in exactly the right place.

It won't suit everyone. If you want to drag and drop blocks in a visual editor, if you refuse to touch Git, if you need a back office so a non-technical team can publish without going through a developer, or if you want a full e-commerce site with a product catalog and payments, other tools are simply better for those cases. Shopify for e-commerce, Webflow for advanced no-code, WordPress for content-heavy sites. I recommend them without hesitation when they're the right fit.

How to get started

Once Git and Claude Code are installed on your machine, a single command is all it takes to get going.

gh repo create mon-site --template Littlpinguin/claude-site-starter --public --clone
cd mon-site
claude

Then, in Claude Code, you type /start-new-site. The wizard takes over and the conversation begins.

A Claude Max subscription (about €100 a month) is recommended for this method. Claude gets used intensively: brainstorming, planning, implementation, audits, Lighthouse iterations. A Pro plan hits its limits in one afternoon on a real project. Unlike WordPress, where the monthly bill piles up with hosting and premium plugins, most of the cost here is concentrated in the build phase, then drops sharply once the site is in production.

What the promise really covers

The real promise: a quality site if you've done the brand work upfront, code that stays under your control, a €5-a-month hosting bill, and an assistant that becomes more relevant as you fill in its context. It's a tool for people who want to own their site and their method, with no dependence on a proprietary platform that can change strategy overnight.

The repository is public and remains a personal project: I don't accept pull requests, I don't monitor issues and I don't keep a public roadmap. I make it visible in the same spirit as the skills and plugins I use myself every day. Fork it, adapt it, use it for your clients if you want: that's what it's for.

For more on the method itself, see how I built jessem.fr with Claude Code. And for the rest of the AI tooling I use, my 2026 selection is here.