Ship a Next.js starter built for agents and humans from the first commit.
Apache 2.0. Three peer apps — web, MCP, API — with parity enforced in CI, not bolted on after launch.
AI systems don't visit sites. They read pages, one at a time, and decide what to cite. When ChatGPT or Perplexity answers a question about your stack, the answer came from pages a model could parse, attribute to a source, and trust enough to quote. A starter that doesn't structure its own output for that reader stays invisible to it, no matter how clean the code underneath is. That's an architecture problem, not a marketing one. Schema has to be typed, not scraped after the fact. Agents need a callable surface, not a scraped DOM. AILK ships both from the scaffold up.
What does 'peer surfaces' actually mean in the repo?
Three apps live in one repo, each a full peer of the others — not a UI with an API bolted on afterward. `apps/web` serves humans, `apps/mcp` serves agents over the Model Context Protocol, and `apps/api` serves programmatic callers over HTTP. A CI test fails the build if any capability drifts out of parity across the three.
apps/web
The human-facing Next.js app. Renders every schema-typed page type from the typed content registry with server components.
apps/mcp
A first-class MCP server exposing the same capabilities as apps/web — page reads, schema queries, content actions — to any MCP-compatible agent.
apps/api
An HTTP API for programmatic callers that aren't MCP clients. Same capability surface, same parity guarantee, enforced by the same CI test.
Is this actually open source, or open-core with the good parts gated?
Apache 2.0, full stop — not source-available, not free-until-you-scale. Every capability in the OSS layer ships complete: the schema registry, the peer apps, the audit CLI, the scaffolding skills. Pro and Pro Plus add hosted capability on top; neither gates anything already in the clone.
What's free
The complete substrate: typed schema registry, peer web/MCP/API apps, `ailk audit`, and the `.claude/` scaffolding bundle.
What's paid
Pro and Pro Plus add hosted capability on top of the clone — they don't unlock anything held back from the OSS layer.
What ships in the OSS layer on day one?
Three things ship in the clone before you write a line of content: a typed schema registry, an AEO audit CLI, and an agent-assisted scaffolding bundle.
Typed schema registry
60 page-type entries, per-type Zod validation, JSON-LD emitted straight from frontmatter — FAQ, glossary, entity, and identity markup included.
`ailk audit` CLI
Runs pre-launch and in CI. Scores structural AEO readiness — missing schema, ambiguous entity, pages that don't emit JSON-LD — before the site ships.
Agent-assisted scaffolding
`create-ailk` generates the three-app skeleton in one command. The `.claude/` bundle ships eight skills, including `scaffold-page`, `add-schema`, and `audit-site`.
AILK vs ShipFast, create-t3-app, and makerkit: which should you choose?
Pick a SaaS starter for a dashboard product where auth and billing are the core deliverable. Pick AILK for a marketing site that has to be read and cited by AI systems — SaaS starters don't ship schema-typed content, an MCP server, or AEO scoring. That's not an oversight; it's not what they were built for.
Auth & billing scaffolding
Schema-typed content surfaces
MCP server (agent-callable)
AEO scoring CLI
License
Clone the repo and check three things yourself: the CI parity test, the deployed `.well-known/mcp.json`, and the `ailk audit` output. None of them require trusting a claim on this page. The parity test runs on every PR and fails the build if `apps/mcp` or `apps/api` drifts from `apps/web`'s capability surface. `.well-known/mcp.json` is live at any deployed AILK URL, including this one — request it directly. `ailk audit` runs against any AILK site, this one included, and produces the same structural score we run in CI. Sam Henry, Working Theory, and SalesSmyth all publish on this substrate. That's why the schema registry and the peer-surfaces architecture exist in their current shape — the team hit these problems first and fixed them in the repo.
Developer questions
What license is AILK under?
Apache 2.0, applied to the entire OSS layer — schema registry, peer apps, audit CLI, and scaffolding skills included. Paid tiers add capability, not access.
What Node and pnpm versions does it require?
Node.js 20 or later and pnpm, deployable on any Vercel-compatible target. `create-ailk` checks your local versions before scaffolding.
Does the MCP server actually match the web UI, or is it a subset?
Full parity, enforced in CI — not a subset. A PR that adds capability to `apps/web` without matching it in `apps/mcp` and `apps/api` fails the build.
Can I deploy this without Vercel?
Yes. Vercel is the one-command path referenced most often, but nothing in the architecture requires it — deploy anywhere that runs a Next.js app.
Is the audit CLI actually free, or a paid-tier teaser?
Free, in the OSS clone. `ailk audit` runs locally and in your own CI with no account or paid tier required.