Client editing for Codex

Let clients edit your Codex site.

Codex built the site from your spec and pushed it. Your client now wants to own their content without you becoming their content desk.

Tusk is a client editing layer for sites you already built. You keep the code, the repo and the hosting. Tusk marks the text, photos and downloads the client may change, and the client changes them on their own live page. Nothing of Tusk runs between a visitor and the site.

Where your Codex site needs to be

1. Nothing to export. Codex works on your repo and speaks MCP, so the connect runs from the same tool.
2. Deploy on any host with a deploy hook; on Netlify or Cloudflare Codex can create the hook itself with the host CLI, and on Vercel you create it and paste the link once.

Connecting it, step by step

1. Add the Tusk MCP to Codex (config below).
2. Run npx @tuskcms/mcp login --site <slug> and approve the link. The token is issued for that site.
3. Tell Codex “Connect this site to Tusk CMS.” It follows the guide: mark, build step, deploy hook, publish, verify.
4. Invite the client.

The MCP config, for Codex. Nothing to install: it runs from npm on demand.

{ "mcpServers": { "tusk": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "@tuskcms/mcp"] } } }

No MCP? Paste this one line into any AI tool that can read a URL and edit files:

Connect this site to Tusk CMS. Read https://tuskcms.com/llms-full.txt first and follow it exactly.

Start from a template

The Tusk starter is a GitHub template: a three-page business site in plain HTML, already marked up, with the build step and Vercel and Netlify config in place. Use the template, deploy it, say “Connect this site to Tusk CMS.”, and hand it to the client. Then reshape it into their site.

Starting from a prompt instead? Ask your tool to build the site with the marks in from the start: the first-prompt version works in any builder.

What the client gets

• Their own login. They open an editor with a live preview of their real website beside the fields you marked, click a heading, a paragraph, a photo or a download, change it, and press Publish.
• Nothing of yours. No repo, no Codex, no code, no layout or styles. What you did not mark cannot be edited.
• History of the last 30 days, with any version restored as a draft, so a bad edit is never permanent.
• A Publish that reaches the live site through your own host, and a dashboard that tells you both whether it did.

What you keep

• The codebase, the hosting and the deploy. Tusk triggers a deploy hook you own, and that link, encrypted, is all it holds of your host.
• A static site that stays static: published content and images are written into your build by two zero-dependency scripts. The deployed site never calls Tusk.
• The retainer. The client pays you; you pay Tusk by site. Clients never pay for their login.
• The exit. Export gives you a site’s words, photos, fields and 30 days of versions as files; disconnect cuts every tie and the site keeps serving.

Questions Codex developers ask

I use Codex in the cloud, not locally.

The login link works from anywhere with a browser; the token lands in the environment Codex runs in. If that environment cannot keep files between runs, do the login step locally once and set TUSK_TOKEN as an environment variable there.

Does Codex need write access to my host?

Only to create a deploy hook, and only if you want it to. You can create the hook yourself in the host dashboard and paste the link into Tusk instead. With a deploy hook, that link is all Tusk keeps of your host, and it is encrypted.

Can I run the connect without any agent?

Yes: mark the HTML by hand, add the two scripts to your build, paste a deploy hook. It is a half-hour job that the agent does in one prompt.

Also built with Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf? Tusk works the same way. All builders: Lovable, v0, Bolt, Replit, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Next.js, Astro, Eleventy, Framer, plain HTML, and any site with a build step or deploy hook.