Overview
Get the model first. Once you see how the pieces fit, every other page is detail.
In one paragraph
Crisptastic is a web framework for sites that need to do more than serve static files. You write a folder of pages, components and layouts, the same way you would with a static site generator. When a page needs something dynamic — a logged-in user, a payment, a file upload, a record from your database — you declare a capability instead of building an API for it. The framework already implements the provider protocol, holds the credentials, and enforces the security. You deploy the whole application as one encrypted file.
The problem it solves
Static site generators are excellent right up to the point where the site has to do something. Then you add a second project: an API server, a database, a pile of provider SDKs, a place to keep secrets, a deployment pipeline, and a process someone has to keep running. Every dynamic site rebuilds that same plumbing, and re-implements the same authentication, webhook-verification and SSRF mistakes.
Crisptastic keeps the authoring model of a static site and moves the plumbing into the framework, so the dynamic parts of your site are a few lines of declaration rather than a separate codebase.
The pieces
| Piece | What it is |
|---|---|
| Pages | Files in a directory that become routes. Server-rendered, with a small template syntax and a typed request/session context. |
| Capabilities | Named services the framework owns: auth, data, payments, files, images, messaging. A page declares the operation; the framework runs the protocol. |
| SDA | A declarative shaping expression for turning an awkward API response into the exact shape a page needs. |
| Capsule | The deployable unit: one immutable, content-addressed, encrypted file containing the compiled application. It carries everything except the secret values. |
| Host | The server that runs Capsules. It sits behind your reverse proxy, selects a site by domain, injects secrets into memory, and activates atomically. |
| Fabric | An optional in-memory cluster of hosts. A deployment targets the Fabric, not a machine; it keeps sites running across replaceable nodes. |
How authoring feels
You reason about pages, components, request and session data, validation, a few declared capability calls, and responses. You do not author or operate an application HTTP server, a language runtime, an ORM, provider SDK setup, a process supervisor, per-app proxy config, or a deploy script.
Local development uses the exact production execution model. crisptastic dev
is production with watch mode, not an approximation.
What it is not
- Not a static site generator. Pages execute per request; output can be per-user.
- Not a container platform. A Capsule is one declared application, not an arbitrary process.
- Not a backend-as-a-service. Your records, files and images live in your own database and storage. Crisptastic keeps no authoritative data of its own.
- Not an ORM. Pages talk to a declared data API with runtime credentials, not raw SQL.
Where to go next
In a hurry, or feeding this to an LLM? The Cheatsheet is the entire authoring surface — layout, routing, syntax, includes, Markdown, assets and a complete minimal site — on one page.
- Install & run and The development loop — day-to-day work.
- Pages & routing and Templating — how you build pages.
- Capabilities — how a page does something.
- Build & Capsules, Deploying to a host, Running a host — shipping and operating.
- Clustering with Fabric — running it highly available.
- Security model — the guarantees you are relying on.