hadley init

hadley init [dir] [--language <languages>] [--theme <theme>] [--blank]

Makes a new site in dir, by default the current directory, which must be empty or not exist: a theme as its theme/, by default hems, with the theme’s own starter, the sample site made for it (starters/<theme>/). hems brings Feather Cat, a small blog with articles, a series and pictures to read and make one’s own; punch brings Noa Varela, a personal site with a few posts. --blank takes the starter blank instead, which goes with any theme: a home page, an imprint, a feed page and a 404 page, and nothing to delete. A theme hadley does not bring stops it, naming those it does. The blocks of the theme’s starter: (theme.lima) go into the new config.lima, and the year init runs in as site.since, the first year of the copyright line (config.md).

init also writes AGENTS.md: notes for a coding agent working in the site, naming its folders, its commands and which documentation to read for what. CLAUDE.md beside it imports it for Claude Code. Codex reads AGENTS.md itself, and so does the agent the editor’s chat starts in the site. Both belong to the site, as its theme does: hadley writes them once and never again.

--language names the site’s languages, its default first: de for German alone, de,en for German with English. all stands for all the starter is written in, en,de,fr,es,it for every one. Without it the site is English. A language the starter is not written in stops it, naming those it is.

A starter keeps each language’s text under its name: its pages in the bundles’ language folders (English in the bundle itself), its values in blocks or keys named after it in config.lima and the person file; the blocks of site: in its config.lima are the languages it is written in. init leaves out the languages not chosen and moves the default language’s pages into the bundles, English ones into en/ if English is not the default. A urlPath loses the prefix of a language that becomes the default (/de/ is /) and gains /en/ where English is no longer the default.