crofty

Get started

Install crofty, then hand it to your AI agent. That’s the whole setup — crofty is built to be run by your assistant, not memorised by you.

Before you begin

1. Install

macOS (Homebrew):

brew install ShiroDoromoto/crofty/crofty

Windows (Scoop):

scoop bucket add crofty https://github.com/ShiroDoromoto/scoop-crofty
scoop install crofty

Linux (.deb / .rpm) — grab the package for your CPU from the latest release, then install it:

sudo dpkg -i crofty_*_linux_amd64.deb   # Debian/Ubuntu (or _arm64)
sudo rpm -i  crofty_*_linux_amd64.rpm   # Fedora/RHEL/openSUSE

2. Hand it to your agent

Start your AI assistant in your terminal and just ask:

run crofty agent

That prints crofty’s whole command surface for your agent to read. It opens by asking what you’re making — a blog, or a wider site (a blog plus pages like about, gallery, shop, contact) — then drives the rest with you: creating the project, previewing it, publishing to your own host, and handing you a summary and link to share.

One moment is yours alone: when it’s time to publish, crofty asks for your host credentials right in the terminal — a Cloudflare API token, or your server’s password or key. You paste it there — it goes to your system keychain, never through your assistant and never to us.

That’s the whole flow. Everything below your agent already knows from crofty agent — it’s here only if you’d like to see what it’s doing, or drive crofty by hand.

The full command flow, step by step

You never need to run these yourself — your agent does. They’re the steps crofty agent walks through.

Create your site — from scratch, or in an existing folder you keep in Git. crofty deploys to Cloudflare by default; pass --provider sftp or ftps to publish to your own server instead:

crofty init        # new project under ~/Documents/Crofty/
crofty init .      # or set up in place, leaving your layout as-is
crofty init --provider sftp --host example.com --user me --path /var/www/site

See it, then publish to your own host:

crofty preview     # open it locally — no account yet
crofty connect     # save your deploy credentials to your keychain
crofty deploy      # publish to your host — Cloudflare Pages, or your SFTP/FTPS server
crofty share       # print a summary + link to paste anywhere

Drafts & scheduling — standard Hugo, nothing crofty-specific: draft: true keeps a page out of the build; a future date holds it until then. crofty build lists what it left out.

Make it yours:

crofty theme set quiet-paper   # or: terminal, serif (default)
crofty theme eject             # take the design tokens to tweak by hand
crofty features                # everything crofty can do, and how to turn each on
crofty add mermaid             # turn one on; also: abc, highlight, raw-html, analytics

Want reader support? Add a Stripe / GitHub Sponsors / Ko-fi link under support in data/profile.yml — it shows in your footer, and the money never routes through crofty.

Updating

crofty updates the way you installed it:

brew upgrade crofty     # macOS
scoop update crofty     # Windows
sudo dpkg -i crofty_*_linux_amd64.deb   # Linux: install the newer .deb (or rpm -i the .rpm)

Your content is plain Markdown and the theme is a frozen output contract, so an update never rewrites what you’ve written — and crofty doctor still checks the built site. New abilities show up in crofty agent, so your assistant picks them up on its next read; nothing to relearn.

Changed your mind?

No lock-in, ever. Your content is plain Markdown and the build is an ordinary Hugo site you can keep and run without crofty. More on leaving →