Slim Minima starter templates: what you actually get

People ask me where the Slim Minima template gallery is. The honest answer is that there isn't one, and I want to explain why that's fine before you go looking for a download page that doesn't exist.

If you come from WordPress, "starter template" means a theme you install on top of a blank site. That mental model doesn't map onto Slim Minima. The repository itself is the template.

The Slim Minima starter is the repo. Clone it, run the seed, and you have a working site in minutes. "Picking a template" here means restyling theme variables and rearranging blocks, not downloading a separate theme.

The short answer

There is no marketplace of Slim Minima themes. When you clone the Slim Minima repository and run the seed command, you get a complete, working foundation:

• A home page, an about page, and a blog with sample posts
• The admin panel at /admin with your first admin account
• Reusable contact forms and the contact-form block
• The full block library (hero, heading, richtext, image, gallery, columns, cta, feature-grid, pricing-table, posts-list, testimonial, faq-accordion, and more)
• The complete SEO and LLM setup: canonical URLs, JSON-LD, sitemap, RSS, robots.txt, and per-page markdown for AI crawlers

That seeded site is your starting point. You make it yours by editing a handful of CSS variables and rearranging blocks, not by swapping out a theme package.

Why "templates" work differently here

Slim Minima styles everything through CSS custom properties: --bg, --surface, --text, --accent, --radius, and --container. These live in src/app/globals.css. Change them and the whole site re-skins at once.

That's the core idea. A "theme" in Slim Minima is mostly a set of values for those variables plus an arrangement of the existing blocks. It is not a downloadable bundle of templates and widgets the way a WordPress theme is.

I made that choice on purpose. WordPress themes carry their own page builders, option panels, and assumptions, and they fight each other. Slim Minima keeps one styling layer so there's nothing to conflict. If you want the reasoning behind that, I wrote it up in why I built Slim Minima.

The tradeoff is real: you don't get to browse 5,000 ready-made looks. You design the look yourself, or you have an AI agent do it. More on both below.

How to use the repo as your starter

Here's the actual workflow, start to finish.

1. Fork or clone the repo. Start from github.com/geraldho81/slim-minima. Forking gives you your own copy to commit to. The license is MIT, so the code is yours to keep and change.
2. Set up the environment. Copy .env.example to .env.local and fill in DATABASE_URL (a Neon pooled connection), AUTH_SECRET (generate it with openssl rand -base64 32), and your Cloudinary keys if you want media uploads.
3. Run the migrations and seed. npm run db:migrate builds the schema, then npm run seed creates your first admin and the sample home, about, and blog pages. npm run dev starts it locally.
4. Restyle the CSS variables. Open src/app/globals.css and set --bg, --surface, --text, --accent, --radius, and --container to your palette and shape. This is the fastest way to change how the whole site feels.
5. Swap blocks and content. In /admin, rearrange the blocks on each page, edit the copy, and drop in your own images. Add or remove pages. The blog is already wired up.
6. Deploy. Push to Vercel (the recommended host since it's native Next.js) or any other Next.js host. The build runs migrations first, so a broken schema never ships.

That's a real site, not a placeholder. The deploy story is short enough that I broke it down separately in building a client-ready website with Slim Minima.

Saving your own arrangement as a starter

Once you've restyled a site you like, you can reuse it. Your forked repo, with your CSS variables set and your preferred block arrangements, becomes your personal starter for the next project. Clone it again, point it at a new Neon database, reseed, and you're building on a base you already trust.

This is how most people end up with a "template" in Slim Minima: not by downloading one, but by keeping the one they built. It's lower-friction than it sounds because the styling lives in a few variables and the content lives in the database.

Letting an AI agent scaffold from a brief

Slim Minima is built to be driven by AI coding agents, so the other way to "pick a template" is to describe the site you want and let an agent build it.

The repo exposes a REST API at /api/v1 and an MCP server at /api/mcp, both behind an API key. An MCP client (Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok) can create pages and posts, upload images to Cloudinary, and add categories. There's also a CLI (npm run cms -- <command>) for creating pages and posts, publishing, setting menus, and more.

In practice, the build-from-brief workflow is: clone the repo, give an agent your brief and the codebase, and have it write the custom blocks and content for your specific site. The agent restyles the variables, arranges the blocks, and loads your copy. You review and ship. The tagline for the project is "vibe code the site, hand off a CMS," and this is the "vibe code" half.

This is genuinely the intended path for a fresh site. The design is meant to come from you or your agent, not from a gallery.

The honest limitation

Let me be plain about the gap. There is not yet a large public gallery of Slim Minima themes you can browse and click to install. The project is young (v0.1.3) and largely a solo and community open-source effort. The design model assumes you'll drive the look yourself.

If your whole reason for wanting a CMS is that you want to browse hundreds of polished, ready-made themes and pick one without touching CSS, Slim Minima is not the shortest path for you today. That's a fair thing to want, and I'd rather say so than oversell.

What you should consider instead, if that's your need:

• WordPress. It has the largest theme ecosystem of any platform, free and paid, plus page builders like Elementor. If a marketplace of designs is the point, this is the obvious choice. (I've written about where WordPress struggles in the AI age too, so you can weigh both sides.)
• Webflow. A strong visual builder with template marketplaces and a polished design surface, if you want to design in a browser rather than in code.

Both are good at the thing Slim Minima deliberately doesn't do. I'd rather credit them than pretend otherwise.

Who this suits

Use the Slim Minima repo as your starter if:

• You're an AI-assisted developer who's happy to clone, restyle variables, and let an agent fill in the rest.
• You're a small business or portfolio owner who cares about owning the code and keeping costs near zero (the only mandatory cost is a domain, roughly 2 to 3 USD a year).
• You want a clean, modern Next.js base you can hand to a non-technical client with an admin panel attached.

Skip it, for now, if you specifically want to shop a theme marketplace and never look at code or talk to an agent.

Frequently asked questions

Does Slim Minima have a template gallery I can browse? No. There is no public theme marketplace yet. The repository itself is the starter template, and you customize it by editing CSS variables and rearranging blocks rather than downloading a separate theme.

How do I create a new site from the Slim Minima starter? Clone or fork the repo, copy .env.example to .env.local and fill in your database, auth secret, and Cloudinary keys, then run npm run db:migrate, npm run seed, and npm run dev. The seed creates a working home page, about page, blog, and admin account.

Can I reuse a site I built as my own starter template? Yes. Keep your forked repo with your CSS variables and block arrangements set, then clone it again and point it at a new database for the next project. That becomes your personal boilerplate.

Can an AI agent build a Slim Minima site for me? Yes. The repo exposes a REST API and an MCP server, plus a CLI, so an MCP client like Claude or ChatGPT can create pages and posts, upload images, and add content. The intended workflow is to give an agent your brief and the codebase and have it scaffold the site.

Is the Slim Minima starter free to use? The code is MIT licensed, so it's free to clone, change, and keep. Running it is free at small scale on the Neon, Vercel, and Cloudinary free tiers. I cover the limits in detail in how far the free stack stretches.

What if I want hundreds of ready-made themes? Slim Minima is not the right fit for that today. WordPress and Webflow have large template marketplaces and are a better choice if browsing and installing designs without code is your main requirement.

Related reading

• Why I built Slim Minima for the reasoning behind the one-styling-layer approach.
• Building a client-ready website with Slim Minima for the full build and handoff workflow.
• How far does the free stack stretch? for what running a Slim Minima site actually costs.
• The Slim Minima homepage for an overview of the project.

My verdict

If you're an AI-assisted developer or a cost-conscious owner who's willing to restyle a few variables, the Slim Minima repo is a solid starter and you don't need a gallery. Clone it, reskin it, and reuse your own fork on the next project. If you specifically want to shop a marketplace of finished themes with no code, use WordPress or Webflow instead, and come back to Slim Minima when you'd rather own the whole thing.