CherryBomb

Configuration

A Cherry site has exactly one configuration file: cherry.exs at the site root, a plain Elixir keyword list. This site's own file is a complete real example:

[

  title: "CherryBomb",

  url: "https://cherrybomb.dev",

  description: "Cherry is a static site generator for hackers, a modern take on Octopress.",

  author: "holsee",

  theme: "cherrybomb",

  search: "cherry",

  social_image: "og-card.png",

  nav: [

    [label: "Guides", href: "guides/", position: :start],

    [label: "Docs", href: "docs/", position: :start]

  ]

]

The file is schema-validated at load: an unknown key or a bad value is a build error naming the key, never a silently ignored line.

Every key

key type what it does
title string, required The site name: header, feeds, page titles.
url string, required The real deployed URL. Canonical links, feeds, and the sitemap derive from it.
description string Site-level meta description and feed subtitle.
author string Feed author; defaults to the title.
theme string "default", "cherrybomb", or a site-local path like "themes/neon".
search string "cherry" builds the index in-process with no Node anywhere; "pagefind" shells out to Pagefind at the end of the build. Unset means no search.
base_path string For project pages served under a subpath, e.g. "/repo". Every link, image, feed URL, and component src is rewritten.
social_image string Site-relative fallback social card, e.g. "og-card.png". Pages without their own image use it, and it upgrades the Twitter card to summary_large_image.
nav list Extra nav entries; see below.
tokens keyword list Theme token overrides; see below.

The built-in nav entries (Blog, then Portfolio and CV when those collections exist) come free. nav: adds yours:

nav: [

  [label: "Guides", href: "guides/", position: :start],

  [label: "Sponsor", href: "https://github.com/sponsors/you"]

]

position: :start places an entry before the built-ins; the default :end appends after them. Site-relative hrefs pass through base_path rewriting; absolute http(s) hrefs are left alone. Nav hrefs are checked by the same broken-link rule as everything else, so a nav entry to a page you deleted fails cherry check.

Theme tokens

tokens: overrides any token the active theme's manifest declares. This is rung one of the styling ladder:

tokens: [

  "--color-accent": "light-dark(#7c3aed, #a78bfa)"

]

A plain value applies to both renditions; a light-dark(a, b) pair carries both. A token the theme does not declare is a build error with a suggestion:

error: tokens: --color-acent is not a token of theme default (did you mean --color-accent?) — `cherry theme.tokens` lists them

Editing without an editor

Everything above can be read and written from the CLI, which is how agents (and scripts) configure a site:

$ cherry config                       # everything, resolved

$ cherry config title                 # one value

$ cherry config title "Juno Vale"     # write one value

$ cherry config tokens.--color-accent "#7c3aed"

Writes are surgical: only the value changes, comments survive, and an invalid value is rolled back with the file left untouched. Structured keys (nav:) are refused rather than reformatted; edit those in the file. The full behaviour is documented in the CLI reference.