Installation

Install Deno

Dune runs on Deno 2.x. If you don't have it yet:

# macOS / Linux
curl -fsSL https://deno.land/install.sh | sh

# Windows (PowerShell)
irm https://deno.land/install.ps1 | iex

# Homebrew
brew install deno

Verify your installation:

deno --version
# deno 2.x.x

Create a new site

dune new my-site
cd my-site

This scaffolds a minimal Dune site:

my-site/
├── dune.config.ts          # Site configuration (programmatic)
├── content/                # Your content lives here
│   └── 01.home/
│       └── default.md      # Your homepage
├── config/
│   ├── site.yaml           # Site identity (title, URL, taxonomies)
│   └── system.yaml         # Engine behavior (cache, debug, languages)
└── themes/
    └── default/            # Starter theme with JSX templates
        ├── templates/
        │   └── default.tsx
        └── theme.yaml

Start the dev server

dune dev

Open http://localhost:8000. You should see your homepage.

The dev server watches for changes — edit content/01.home/default.md and your browser will refresh automatically.

What just happened?

Dune scanned the content/ directory and built a content index — a lightweight map of every page, its route, and its frontmatter
It loaded config/site.yaml and config/system.yaml, merging them with defaults
It started a Fresh 2 server with a catch-all route that resolves URLs against the content index
When you visited /, Dune found 01.home/default.md, loaded its Markdown, rendered it to HTML, and injected it into the default.tsx template from your theme