Permacommons Website

The official website for Permacommons – building a permanent home for useful shared resources maintained with AI assistance.

About Permacommons

Permacommons is building a permanent home for useful shared resources that are maintained with AI assistance, starting with open source software. Our mission is to create a sustainable ecosystem where the amount of human labor scales with the quality of AI systems—as they improve, human effort decreases, but never at the expense of quality, usability, or security.

Our Vision: Human Oversight + AI Assistance + Endowment Funding = Permanent Commons of Shared Resources

Core Values

• Quality never compromises as AI systems improve
• Human effort scales down while impact scales up
• Security monitoring and maintenance are highly automated, with human oversight
• Documentation stays fresh through continuous AI updates
• New contributors feel welcomed by reduced barriers to entry

Architecture

This website is built using modern web technologies with a focus on performance, accessibility, and maintainability:

• Static Site Generator: Eleventy (v3.1.6)
• Templating: Nunjucks (.njk files)
• Styling: Custom CSS with locally hosted Inter font family
• Build System: Node.js with npm scripts
• Feeds: Atom feed generated with the official Eleventy RSS plugin
• Deployment: Static files generated to _site/ directory
• Privacy: No external CDN dependencies - all assets served locally

Project Structure

permacommons.org/
├── src/                    # Source files
│   ├── _includes/          # Reusable templates
│   │   └── layouts/        # Page layouts
│   │       ├── base.njk    # Base HTML template
│   │       ├── home.njk    # Homepage template
│   │       └── post.njk    # Blog post template
│   ├── css/                # Stylesheets
│   │   └── style.css       # Main stylesheet
│   ├── fonts/              # Local font files
│   │   ├── inter.css       # Font declarations
│   │   └── inter-*.ttf     # Inter font files (300-700 weights)
│   ├── posts/              # Blog posts (Markdown)
│   ├── blog.njk            # Blog index page
│   ├── index.njk           # Homepage
│   └── images/             # Image assets
│       ├── logo.png        # Site logo
│       └── opengraph-banner.jpg # Social media banner
├── _site/                  # Generated static site
├── .eleventy.js            # Eleventy configuration
├── package.json            # Dependencies and scripts
├── AGENTS.md               # AI agent guidelines
├── LICENSES.md             # Third-party asset licenses
└── README.md               # This file

Development

Prerequisites

• Node.js 24 LTS (recommended; .nvmrc is shared with CI), or Node.js 22.19+
• npm

If you use nvm, run nvm install and nvm use in the repository first.

Setup

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/permacommons/permacommons.org.git
   cd permacommons.org

2. Install dependencies:

   npm ci

3. Start development server:

   npm run dev

   The site will be available at http://localhost:8080 with live reload.

Build Scripts

• npm run build - Build the static site for production
• npm run serve - Build and serve the site locally with watch mode
• npm run dev - Development server with watch mode
• npm test - Render in memory and check navigation markup, FAQ sections, dates, and feed output

Dependency Maintenance and CI

Run npm outdated and npm audit to check dependencies. After updating packages, commit both package.json and package-lock.json, and run npm run build and npm test. Builds use local assets and do not fetch third-party resources.

GitHub Actions builds and tests pull requests. Successful builds on main deploy to GitHub Pages; deployment permissions are limited to the deploy job. Dependabot checks npm dependencies and GitHub Actions monthly.

Adding Content

Blog Posts

Create new blog posts in src/posts/ using the format:

---
layout: layouts/post.njk
title: "Your Post Title"
description: "Brief description"
date: YYYY-MM-DD
author: "Author Name"
tags: ["tag1", "tag2"]
---

Your content here...

Pages

Create new pages in src/ as .njk files with front matter.

Contributing

We welcome contributions that align with our principles. Please read AGENTS.md for detailed guidelines on accessibility, progressive enhancement, privacy, and design standards.

This website works without JavaScript, prioritizes accessibility, minimizes external dependencies, and maintains high aesthetic standards.

License

This project is licensed under CC0-1.0 - see the LICENSE file for details.

Connect

• Website: permacommons.org
• GitHub: github.com/permacommons
• Discussions: github.com/orgs/permacommons/discussions

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Building the future of open source, one commit at a time.