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cr4te is a local-first static site generator for personal media archives. It scans a folder of creators and projects, reconciles editable metadata, generates thumbnails, and writes a searchable static HTML gallery for images, video, audio, documents, and Markdown text.

The generated site does not need a database or server. You can open it from disk, or serve the output folder with any static file server.

Quick Start

Try the bundled music example from the repo root:

cr4te build -i data/example/Musicians -o output/example-site --domain music

Then open output/example-site/index.html, or serve it locally:

cd output/example-site
python -m http.server 8000

For your own archive:

cr4te build -i path/to/Creators -o path/to/site --domain music

For the full first-run flow, see Getting Started.

What cr4te Builds

cr4te expects one input folder containing creator folders. Creators can have their own media and one level of project folders. In the generated site, creators and projects get overview pages, detail pages, search, tags, galleries, thumbnails, media players, and theme switching.

Documentation

• Getting Started
• Library Structure
• Metadata
• Configuration
• Domain Presets
• Build Command
• Generated Site
• Media and Galleries
• Tags and Search
• Custom Themes
• Troubleshooting
• Screenshots
• Development

Current Scope

cr4te is designed for local personal archives and static publishing. It favors explicit metadata, predictable folder structure, and rebuildable output over a database-backed or hosted editing workflow.