Getting Started
Introduction
What the AI Directory Template is, how it's built, and where to go next.
The AI Directory Template is a complete, self-running AI tools directory you deploy and own. Out of the box it ships everything the live site you're reading this on runs on:
- A public directory — tools, categories, comparisons, stacks, roles, news, and a blog, all SEO-ready.
- An operations console at
/admin— review queues, editing, taxonomy, settings, audit trail. - 10 automated content pipelines — a news desk, tool crawler, editorial enrichment, comparison and stack generators, and more, each a plain HTTP endpoint you schedule however you like.
- An agent API — a scoped REST API plus a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, so a coding agent can run the whole directory for you.
- Built-in Stripe monetization — paid fast-track reviews and featured placements, no third-party plugin.
It's one Next.js monorepo and one deploy unit (apps/web). The stack is Next.js 16, React 19, Turborepo, Prisma on Postgres, shadcn/ui, and optional Cloudflare R2 for image storage.
The design philosophy
Three kinds of information live in three places, and the separation is the whole point:
| What | Lives in | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Content — tools, news, posts, settings | The Postgres database | Editable from /admin with no deploy; nothing is hardcoded |
| Display identity — name, logo text, colors, prices | /admin/settings | Rebranding never touches code |
| Secrets & deploy identity — database URL, API keys, canonical URL | Environment variables | Kept out of the repo and out of the database |
Because your content and identity never live in code, two things follow. Rebranding the site is data entry, not a code change. And when a template update arrives, it merges cleanly — your customizations and the template's logic rarely touch the same files. See Getting updates for that workflow.
Requirements
- Node 20+
- pnpm (the repo is a pnpm workspace)
- A Postgres database — local, Neon, Supabase, or any managed Postgres
Nothing else is required to run the site. AI editorial (DeepSeek), image storage (R2), and payments (Stripe) are all optional and degrade gracefully when their keys are absent.
Map of the docs
Getting Started
- Getting started — clone to a browsable site on your machine
- Environment variables — the full env reference
- Deployment — VPS, Vercel, or bare-metal, plus cron setup
Guides
- Configuration — the two-layer settings model
- Content operations — the daily editorial loop
- Pipelines — what each of the 10 automations does
- Monetization — built-in Stripe revenue
- Agent access — API keys, REST, and MCP
Codebase
- Customization — rebranding and extending
- Project structure — a tour of the monorepo
- Getting updates — pulling template updates with git
New here? Start with Getting started.