devtools.fm: Developer Tools, Open Source, Software Development Simen Svale - sanity.io
Mar 17, 2025
Simen Svale, Co-founder and CTO of Sanity.io, shares insights on building a developer-first content platform. He discusses his transition from agency work to creating a scalable CMS that prioritizes developer experience. The conversation explores Sanity's innovative features like Portable Text, a structured text format, and GROQ, a unique query language. Simen also talks about AI-assisted authoring in Sanity Create and future plans for richer automation and enhanced content workflows, aimed at revolutionizing content management.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
One Platform for Editors And Developers
- Sanity targets both editors (as a CMS/admin UI) and developers (as a framework) with the same platform.
- That duality enables tiny projects to scale up to global operations like Skims and Burger King.
What A Content OS Actually Is
- A content operating system combines a content-optimized database, distribution, automation, and UI customization.
- Embedding automations and backend compute into projects makes content processes first-class parts of the platform.
Make CMS Programmable But Opinionated
- Be programmable: expose code-first customization so teams can adapt the CMS to workflows instead of forcing one-size-fits-all.
- Provide strong defaults and clearer prescriptive guidance so users avoid replicating bad legacy workflows.