Introduction to framework-agnostic Sitecore development

You can build a Sitecore site without a Sitecore SDK.

Sitecore development means modeling content in Sitecore and building apps that retrieve and render it. It also means enabling inline editing for content authors, supporting multiple sites and languages, and integrating personalization capabilities.

To make development faster and easier, Sitecore provides dedicated SDKs for certain front-end frameworks, but you're not limited to those frameworks. You can use any front-end technology and call Sitecore's framework-agnostic APIs directly, without a Sitecore SDK.

The core content delivery flow is:

1. Sitecore manages your content.
2. Your app retrieves that content via APIs.
3. Your front end renders the content using any framework or language you choose.

This documentation explains how to integrate your front-end app with Sitecore's content delivery and authoring capabilities using framework-agnostic APIs.

The framework-agnostic documentation is part of a phased rollout. It currently covers:

• Project setup - create a SitecoreAI project, connect it to source control, and deploy it with an environment and a site. In this step, you also create a front-end application using your preferred framework.
• Content rendering - display SitecoreAI content in your front-end app using GraphQL APIs.
• Visual editing - enable inline editing for content authors working in the SitecoreAI Page builder.
• Routing, localization, and multi-sites - handle multi-site setups, redirects, and locale resolution across your sites.

Future releases will also cover:

• Analytics and personalization - add site analytics, personalization, and A/B/n testing to your site.
• Advanced tooling - extend your app with AI-powered Sitecore features.

Although building a custom SDK is not covered here, working through this documentation will give your development team the foundation to package these APIs into your own SDK that matches your framework's conventions.