Paperplane CMS.
A fast, markdown-first headless CMS engineered with a terminal-grade editor and end-to-end type safety.
system architecture & goal.
Paperplane CMS is a content authoring platform created for technical teams who prefer markdown workflows over clunky WYSIWYG editors. It combines Git-backed storage, live collaborative preview environments, and end-to-end type-safe API generation via tRPC to provide instant content publishing directly into modern frontend frameworks.
Core Architectural Highlights
Vim & terminal keybindings built directly into the live markdown editor.
Zero-config tRPC schema generation for static and dynamic frontend queries.
Branch-based draft previews with instant Vercel-like deployment links.
AST-based syntax validation for MDX components and embedded interactive widgets.
challenges & engineering solutions.
Real-Time Collaborative AST Synchronization
Concurrent edits in the markdown editor often caused syntax tree desynchronization and cursor jumping when multiple authors edited the same block.
Integrated Conflict-free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs) with Yjs over WebSockets to synchronize character deltas instead of full document state.
CRDT-based synchronization provided flawless multi-user collaboration with zero merge conflicts and instant offline recovery.
Static Type Generation for Dynamic MDX Frontmatter
User-defined custom schema fields lacked compile-time type safety in client consumer applications.
Engineered a background CLI daemon that watches content schemas and generates TypeScript declaration files (.d.ts) automatically on schema changes.
Bridging headless content models with TypeScript strict typing dramatically reduces runtime runtime bugs.
future improvements.
AI-assisted technical copyediting and automated grammar & tone suggestions.
Direct GitHub pull-request syncing for content changes reviewed by engineering teams.
Native image optimization CDN with automatic WebP conversion and responsive source sets.
Custom webhook engine with retry exponential backoff and payload signing.