Platform
An operating system for an author's entire digital presence
AuthorOS is not a website builder with author-shaped templates. It is a structured record of an author's work and audience, with a website as one of its outputs.
How it is built
Six layers, each doing one job
Structured author data
Authors, books, series, events and press assets are records, not page content. Enter a biography once and every surface that needs it reads the same field.
See the author module →Brand kit and design tokens
Expression (colour, type, buttons, imagery) and structure (scale, rhythm, radius, containers) are separated, then resolved into a single set of CSS custom properties.
See design tokens →A platform-owned component registry
AuthorOS owns the catalogue of section types and the fields each one exposes. The editor is a consumer of that registry, never its owner.
Browse the registry →One renderer, two contexts
The builder canvas and the public site mount the same component tree with the same page data. A page cannot look different in the editor than it does to a reader.
Open the builder →Publishing with a history
Draft, review, schedule and publish, with a release record for every transition and a rollback path.
See the queue →Multi-tenant from the first table
One account belongs to many organizations. Every query is scoped by tenant, and switching organizations changes the entire product context.
See organizations →Component registry
Sixteen section types, owned by the platform
Every page in AuthorOS is assembled from this catalogue. Templates choose a starting sequence; authors edit from there.
Structure
Header
Site masthead with wordmark and primary navigation.
Spacer
Deliberate vertical breathing room.
Footer
Closing navigation, credits and legal line.
Author
Author Hero
Opening statement with author name, promise and calls to action.
Biography
Long-form author biography with portrait and signature.
Events
Upcoming appearances, signings and speaking engagements.
Books
Featured Book
Spotlight one title with cover, description and retail links.
Book Grid
The full library, or a filtered selection, as a cover grid.
Series
A series with reading order and hero treatment.
Social proof
Quote
A single pull quote set in editorial type.
Reviews
A set of press quotes and reader praise.
Media Logos
Wordmarks of outlets that have covered the author.
Audience
Newsletter Signup
Reader capture block wired to the AuthorOS audience layer.
Call to Action
A decisive closing block with one clear next step.
Social Links
Where readers can follow the author elsewhere.
Media
Gallery
A row of images — research, places, or behind the writing.
Editor architecture
The visual builder sits behind an interface
The prototype ships a native AuthorOS editor. It is deliberately isolated behind a BuilderEngine interface so that a production implementation — Puck, for instance — can replace it without redesigning the UI, the page schema, the component registry or persistence.
Documented in PROTOTYPE-ARCHITECTURE.md
Prototype scope
What is real, and what is represented
Being clear about this is what makes a prototype useful rather than misleading.
- Tenant and site switching
- Author, book, series and event management
- Brand kit and design token editing with live preview
- Template application
- The visual builder: add, select, reorder, edit, remove
- Responsive desktop / tablet / mobile preview
- The public author website
- Page management and navigation building
- Reader CRM, segments and campaign composition
- Analytics and SEO scoring
- Local persistence and demo reset
- Authentication and real accounts
- A server database — everything lives in the browser
- DNS lookups and certificate issuance
- Sending email
- Payment processing
- Analytics collection — figures are generated deterministically
- Asset uploads — imagery is generated from descriptors