VitNode is a free, open-source community framework. Members, roles, content, real-time updates, search and an Admin Control Panel come in the box. Your ideas go on top. Plugins hold it all together.
Standing on the shoulders of tools you already trust
Why teams pick VitNode
Most community projects die in month three, buried under login forms and admin tables, or end up renting a platform that owns the relationship. VitNode ships the boring parts done and hands you the keys.
Accounts, roles, admin screens, translations, search and real-time updates are already built. Your team starts at the part your members will actually notice.
No monthly licence, no per-seat pricing, no rented platform that can change the rules. Your members, your data and your code live with you.
Every feature is a plugin, written in TypeScript by your team or your agent. Add a shop, a course or a job board next year without a rewrite.
Everything in the box
Seven building blocks that usually eat a year of roadmap. Yours on day one, and they already know how to talk to each other.
Describe it once. Ship the whole thing.
Describe a content type in one file and get the database table, a typed API, admin screens, search indexing and translations. Articles, listings, docs, events: anything with a shape.
Explore the Content EngineHello, whole world.
Every screen, email and content field can speak your members’ language. Add a locale with one command.
Read the internationalization guideFast on the page. Fast on the API.
A front-end query cache plus an optional Redis layer on the API. Pages stop re-asking for what they already know.
See how caching worksOne action. Many good reactions.
Publish a post and let plugins react: send an email, refresh search, ping members. No spaghetti between features.
Learn how events workAI on your terms.
Summaries, drafts, streaming answers and embeddings with any provider through the Vercel AI SDK. You pick the model.
Build AI featuresLess “where was that?”
Site-wide search and a discovery feed across every plugin. Postgres out of the box, Elasticsearch when you outgrow it.
Set up search and discoveryGood news travels live.
One authenticated WebSocket shared by every open tab pushes live toasts and updates from your API today. A notification centre with an inbox is planned.
Read the WebSocket docsThe plugin system
Your community should not outgrow its own software. In VitNode every feature is a plugin, so adding the next big thing never means rewriting the last one.
What could a plugin be? Anything your community asks for next.
The real product, not a mockup
Every plugin gets a home in the Admin Control Panel: users, roles, staff, content, integrations, cron, queues and logs. One place, fewer “where do I change this?” messages. Flip through a few real screens.
Made for people, managed by people
Members sign up, get roles and earn trust. Your team keeps the place healthy from a panel built for the job, not from a spreadsheet and a prayer.
Primary and secondary groups, coloured names and sensible seeded defaults. Organise people the way your community actually works.
Moderators already have their own permission set in the AdminCP. A dedicated moderation workspace is one of the next things being built.
Registration, sign-in, password reset, social login and device sessions are ready before you write your first page.
A site-wide activity feed every plugin can publish into, so members always find the newest thing worth their time.
Built for humans. And their AI agents.
Readable docs, one conventions file, the entire documentation as a single text file, typed APIs and strict plugin boundaries. Your agent stops guessing where things go. You review real progress instead of creative archaeology.
Building AI into the product itself? The same framework gives you summaries, streaming answers and embeddings through the Vercel AI SDK with whichever provider you trust.
A warmer welcome. A smarter front door.
Google, Discord, Facebook or your own OAuth2 provider. One config line, buttons appear.
Cloudflare Turnstile or reCAPTCHA v3 guard sign-up, password reset and any route you mark.
Brute-force attempts meet a polite 429. Counters share across instances through Redis.
HttpOnly cookies, hashed opaque tokens and a separate session for the AdminCP.
Per-plugin, per-action grants for administrators and moderators, enforced on the API and reflected in the UI.
A little something for the builders
Start a project, build a plugin, make it yours. Familiar tools underneath, end-to-end types in between, and more of your actual product on top.
# scaffold an app, choose Turborepo for plugins$ pnpm create vitnode-app@canary# start Postgres and run$ pnpm docker:dev && pnpm dev# your first feature gets its own package$ pnpm create vitnode-app@canary --pluginNode.js 22+ · Postgres or Docker · bun, pnpm and npm all welcome
Pricing
$0forever · MIT licence
No plans, no seats, no “contact sales” button. The entire framework for every member you will ever have. You can still make your contribution: a pull request, a bug report, or a donation that keeps the maintainer caffeinated.
Servers, databases and coffee still cost money. VitNode does not. Donations go through GitHub Sponsors, straight to the people building it.
Very fair questions
No mysterious asterisk. Just the things people usually ask before they start.
Bring an idea today. Bring your people when it is ready. The framework is free, the docs are friendly and the canary is only a little bit feathery.