Client editing for Windsurf

Let clients edit your Windsurf site.

Cascade built the site with you and it is exactly what the client asked for. Now the client wants to change what it says without a Windsurf licence, a repo invite or a phone call to you.

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 Windsurf site needs to be

1. Nothing to export. Windsurf speaks MCP, so the connect runs from Cascade on the repo you have open.
2. Deploy on a host with a deploy hook or commit-triggered builds.

Connecting it, step by step

1. Add the Tusk MCP in Windsurf’s MCP settings (JSON below).
2. Log in once from the terminal: npx @tuskcms/mcp login --site <slug>.
3. Ask Cascade: “Connect this site to Tusk CMS.” It marks, wires the build, sets up the deploy hook with you, publishes, verifies.
4. Invite the client.

The MCP config, for Windsurf. 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 Windsurf, 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 Windsurf developers ask

Does Cascade need special instructions?

No. The MCP tool descriptions and the public guide at /llms-full.txt are enough. If Cascade ever hesitates, paste the one-line prompt at the bottom of this page.

Can teammates in my studio connect sites too?

Yes, once they have a login in your studio; email us and we add them. Each person approves their own connection, one site at a time. Nobody shares tokens.

What if the client breaks the layout?

They cannot edit layout, styles or code, only the text, photos and downloads you marked. History keeps the last 30 days of versions and restores any of them.

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