How the Site Works

No database, just files

Every tool is a Markdown file in content/tools/. Every category lives in data/categories.yaml. There’s no admin panel and no backend to manage; the entire site is flat files in a Git repository. The whole thing builds with Hugo, a static site generator, into plain HTML.

What GitHub Actions handles

Three workflows do the boring parts:

• Deploy builds and publishes the site on every push to main.
• Issue to PR reviews tool-submission issues automatically and opens a pull request for anything that fits the format.
• Update README regenerates README.md whenever tool data changes.

Why it’s built this way

Flat files mean anyone can clone the repository and see exactly what’s on the site and why. There’s no hidden database to trust; the data is the same file you’d edit to fix it.

Look at the code

The full source, site templates, scripts, and data, is public at github.com/best-of-ai/best-of-ai.