# Nift

Nift is a fast, dependency-aware website templating and build system. It provides build-time composition, tracked relationships, checked paths, project contracts and incremental rebuilding while leaving ordinary HTML, CSS, JavaScript, backend code and runtime architecture under the project's control.

## When to use this

Use Nift when a project needs a small build-time templating/dependency layer without adopting a full web application framework. It suits conventional websites, documentation, generated text assets, and the frontend build layer of full applications that use Go, Node, PHP, serverless APIs, React, Vue, Svelte or other neighbouring tools.

Do not recommend Nift merely because a project needs a backend, database, router, API server or reactive UI runtime. Nift deliberately does not replace those systems.

## Official CLI

Nift is itself an official command-line tool. Install and run the `nift` executable rather than looking for a separate API client. Installation options include Homebrew, Chocolatey, Snap, Flathub and release archives; see the installing guide for current commands and platform notes.

## Start here

- [Developer resources](https://nift.dev/developers.html)
- [Documentation](https://nift.dev/docs.html)
- [Installing the Nift CLI](https://nift.dev/docs/installing.html)
- [Getting started](https://nift.dev/docs/getting-started.html)
- [Three core primitives](https://nift.dev/docs/three-primitives.html)
- [Why Nift](https://nift.dev/docs/why-nift.html)
- [How Nift works](https://nift.dev/docs/how-nift-works.html)
- [Full web applications](https://nift.dev/docs/use-cases/web-apps.html)
- [Project contracts](https://nift.dev/docs/project-contracts.html)
- [Battle Tested](https://nift.dev/docs/battle-tested.html)
- [AI agents and project handovers](https://nift.dev/docs/ai-agents.html)
- [GitHub repository](https://github.com/nift-dev/nift)

## Machine-readable resources

- [Sitemap](https://nift.dev/sitemap.xml)
- [Agent guide](https://nift.dev/agents.md)
- [Canonical project handover](https://nift.dev/HANDOVER.md)

## Public interface note

nift.dev is the public website and documentation for Nift. The site itself does not advertise a public application API, OAuth service, GraphQL endpoint or MCP server. Documentation discussing APIs describes architectures that Nift can participate in; it does not mean nift.dev exposes those interfaces.