create-ideal-cms

Scaffold a production-ready Payload CMS monorepo preconfigured with the @focus-reactive plugin suite.

Usage

npx @focus-reactive/create-ideal-cms my-app
# or
npm create @focus-reactive/ideal-cms my-app

You'll be prompted for:

• Project name (also used as the target directory)
• Primary brand color (hex)
• Postgres connection string (DATABASE_URL)
• Public server URL (NEXT_PUBLIC_SERVER_URL)
• Optional: OpenAI key, Vercel Blob token, OIDC SSO credentials
• Package manager (bun / pnpm / npm / skip)

PAYLOAD_SECRET is auto-generated.

What you get

The output mirrors the focusreactive/payload-plugins monorepo, minus the plugin source packages and the plugin dev sandbox:

my-app/
├── apps/
│   └── cms/                  # Payload + Next.js app
├── packages/
│   ├── tailwind-config/
│   ├── typescript-config/
│   └── ui/
├── turbo.json
├── package.json              # bun workspaces
└── …

The published @focus-reactive/payload-plugin-* packages are added to apps/cms as regular dependencies at their latest known versions.

Flags

npx @focus-reactive/create-ideal-cms [name] [--ref <git-ref>] [--from-local <path>]

• --ref — GitHub branch/tag/sha of the source monorepo to template from. Defaults to main. Useful for pinning the scaffold to a known-good revision.
• --from-local — use a local checkout of focusreactive/payload-plugins instead of fetching from GitHub. Path is resolved against the current working directory. See Local development.

Customization

The CLI applies a brand color by appending a --color-primary overlay to packages/tailwind-config/base.css. To go further:

• Tweak the full token palette in packages/tailwind-config/base.css.
• Update collections, globals, and blocks under apps/cms/src/.
• Add or remove plugins in apps/cms/src/plugins/index.ts.

Local development

The CLI lives at packages/create-ideal-cms/ inside the source monorepo. To test changes without publishing, scaffold from a local checkout:

# From inside the monorepo:
cd packages/create-ideal-cms
bun run test:local            # builds, cds to a fresh temp dir, runs --from-local ../..

# Or scaffold into a directory you choose:
cd /tmp
node /path/to/payload-plugins/packages/create-ideal-cms/dist/index.js my-app \
  --from-local /path/to/payload-plugins

--from-local copies the local repo (skipping node_modules, .next, .turbo, dist, .git) instead of fetching the GitHub tarball, so unpublished changes to apps/cms or the workspace packages flow straight into the scaffold output.

Global link (optional)

cd packages/create-ideal-cms
bun run build
bun link
# now from anywhere:
create-ideal-cms my-app --from-local /path/to/payload-plugins