// the find
ponzu-cms/ponzu
Headless CMS with automatic JSON API. Featuring auto-HTTPS from Let's Encrypt, HTTP/2 Server Push, and flexible server framework written in Go.
Ponzu is a headless CMS written in Go that generates a JSON API from content types you define via CLI. It was aimed at the gap between WordPress (too heavy) and a hand-rolled API (too much work), with BoltDB as the embedded datastore and automatic Let's Encrypt TLS baked in. The README now opens with an abandonment warning pointing users to Caddy instead.
The CLI code generator is the best idea here — one command produces a typed Go struct plus an admin editor field for each property, which is genuinely useful for rapid prototyping. Single-binary deployment with an embedded BoltDB means zero external dependencies to stand up locally. Auto-HTTPS via Let's Encrypt was ahead of the curve when this shipped in 2017, before it became table stakes. The addon system at least acknowledged the need for extensibility rather than ignoring it.
It's officially abandoned — the maintainer themselves directs you to a different project in the README, which is the clearest possible signal. BoltDB (now bbolt) works fine but is a write bottleneck under concurrent load and gives you no query language beyond key scanning, which is painful once your content volume grows. The content type system generates Go source files that must be recompiled on every schema change, so it's not actually a dynamic CMS in the way most teams expect. There's no multi-tenancy, no role-based access control beyond a single admin user, and the addon ecosystem never materialized — the only published addon in the repo is a reference field helper.