Ways to build

There are two authoring surfaces for an Acira site — the conversational AI coding agent and the acira CLI — plus a third pattern for framework apps. They all edit the same project, so you can start a site in the agent and later pull it to your editor, or vice versa.

The AI coding agent

Build and change sites by chatting in the app. You describe what you want and the agent writes the pages, logic, and content, showing a live preview as it goes. It's the fastest way to start a site and the easiest way to make everyday changes without touching code.

Best for: getting a site off the ground, content and design changes, and clients or non-developers who want to self-serve.

→ The AI coding agent · Prompting the agent

The acira CLI

Pull a site to your machine, edit it in any editor, and publish it back. You get full control, your own version control, a local preview, and the ability to use AI editors like Claude Code and Cursor against the project.

Best for: developers who want their own toolchain, larger changes, code review, and repeatable workflows.

→ The acira CLI · Publishing & safety

Single-page apps

For app-like surfaces — dashboards, portals, interactive tools — you can mount a single-page app (React, Vue, etc.) under a path on the site and build it with your own bundler. The rest of the site stays server-rendered, and your app talks to the site's own logic as a same-origin API. This path is CLI-only.

→ Single-page apps

Which should I use?

You don't have to choose once and for all. A common pattern is to let the agent scaffold a site and handle content, then pull it with the CLI for heavier development — the two stay in sync because they edit the same files. Publishing always runs the same checks and takes the site live the same way, no matter how it was authored.