feat: manifest-driven template download

Replace the GitHub Contents API tree-walk with a flat manifest approach.
template-manifest.json lists every file and empty directory in the starter
template; download_template() fetches the manifest then pulls each file
directly as a raw URL, sidestepping git API rate limits and making the
template hostable from any HTTP source.

- GITHUB_CONTENTS_API / _github_get / _download_tree removed
- TEMPLATE_BASE_URL + TEMPLATE_MANIFEST constants added
- _http_get() replaces _github_get() (generic, no GitHub headers)
- download_template() accepts optional base_url for custom sources
- app/template-manifest.json added (v0.4, 35 files, 2 empty dirs)
- Generated files (manifest.json, service-worker.js, search.json)
  excluded from manifest — they belong to mdcms build output, not
  the starter template

https://claude.ai/code/session_01Ai8xRvmrzdhuTKiRQ2fnn9

app/template-manifest.json

@@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
+{
+  "mdcms": "0.4",
+  "files": [
+    "404.html",
+    "config.yml",
+    "index.html",
+    "nav.yml",
+    "template-manifest.json",
+    "theme.yml",
+    "assets/icons/add.svg",
+    "assets/icons/arrow_drop_down.svg",
+    "assets/icons/arrow_right.svg",
+    "assets/icons/collapse_content.svg",
+    "assets/icons/dangerous.svg",
+    "assets/icons/dark_mode.svg",
+    "assets/icons/error.svg",
+    "assets/icons/exclamation.svg",
+    "assets/icons/expand_content.svg",
+    "assets/icons/history.svg",
+    "assets/icons/info.svg",
+    "assets/icons/keyboard_arrow_down.svg",
+    "assets/icons/keyboard_arrow_right.svg",
+    "assets/icons/keyboard_double_arrow_down.svg",
+    "assets/icons/keyboard_double_arrow_right.svg",
+    "assets/icons/language.svg",
+    "assets/icons/light_mode.svg",
+    "assets/icons/menu.svg",
+    "assets/icons/minimize.svg",
+    "assets/icons/mobile_arrow_down.svg",
+    "assets/icons/report.svg",
+    "assets/icons/search.svg",
+    "assets/icons/success.svg",
+    "assets/icons/text_compare.svg",
+    "assets/icons/warning.svg",
+    "assets/images/favicon.png",
+    "pages/about.md",
+    "pages/docs.md",
+    "pages/home.md",
+    "pages/tabs-accordions.md"
+  ],
+  "dirs": [
+    "assets/fonts",
+    "posts"
+  ]
+}

docs/unreleased.md

@@ -197,6 +197,37 @@ When a site uses category-suffixed page files (e.g. `page.current.md`) and is ho
 
 ---
 
+## Manifest-driven template download (`mdcms.py`, `app/template-manifest.json`)
+
+`mdcms register` no longer uses the GitHub Contents API to discover and download the starter template. Instead it fetches `app/template-manifest.json` — a single JSON file that lists every file and empty directory in the template — then downloads each file directly as a raw URL.
+
+### Why this matters
+
+The old approach walked the GitHub tree API recursively (one authenticated API call per directory). This hit rate limits, required GitHub-specific logic, and made it impossible to host the template anywhere other than the GitHub API endpoint.
+
+The new approach fetches one manifest then one raw file per entry. Raw downloads bypass API rate limits entirely and work from any HTTP source: a CDN, a self-hosted mirror, or a local server. `download_template()` accepts an optional `base_url` argument for this purpose.
+
+### `app/template-manifest.json` format
+
+```json
+{
+  "mdcms": "0.4",
+  "files": ["index.html", "config.yml", "assets/icons/add.svg", ...],
+  "dirs":  ["assets/fonts", "posts"]
+}
+```
+
+`files` — paths relative to the app root that are fetched and written verbatim.  
+`dirs` — empty directories to create (no file is needed to keep them).
+
+Generated files (`manifest.json`, `service-worker.js`, `search.json`) are intentionally absent; they are produced by `mdcms build` and should not be pre-populated in a fresh site.
+
+### `_http_get` replaces `_github_get`
+
+The old `_github_get` sent GitHub API headers (`Accept: application/vnd.github.v3+json`) and returned raw bytes. It is replaced by a generic `_http_get(url)` that works with any HTTP source. This function is also referenced by `fetch-deps`.
+
+---
+
 ## Clean URLs for section-id pages (`app/index.html`, `app/404.html`)
 
 Pages whose filename matches a nav section-id can now be accessed at a clean URL path (e.g. `example.com/timesheet`) instead of the hash-based URL (`example.com/#pages/timesheet.md`).

mdcms.py

@@ -40,7 +40,8 @@ MARKER_RE = re.compile(r"mdcms v(\d+\.\d+)", re.IGNORECASE)
 CATEGORY_CODE_RE = re.compile(r"^[a-zA-Z0-9\-]+$")
 
 REGISTRY_FILE = Path.home() / ".config" / "mdcms" / "sites.json"
-GITHUB_CONTENTS_API = "https://api.github.com/repos/kbenestad/mdcms/contents/app"
+TEMPLATE_BASE_URL = "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kbenestad/mdcms/main/app"
+TEMPLATE_MANIFEST = "template-manifest.json"
 
 
 # ─── Version helpers ──────────────────────────────────────────
@@ -650,38 +651,31 @@ self.addEventListener('fetch', event => {{
     (site_path / "service-worker.js").write_text(sw, encoding="utf-8")
     click.echo(f"  Wrote service-worker.js (cache: {cache_name})")
 
-# ─── GitHub template download ─────────────────────────────────
+# ─── HTTP helper ──────────────────────────────────────────────
 
-def _github_get(url: str) -> bytes:
-    req = urllib.request.Request(
-        url,
-        headers={
-            "User-Agent": f"mdcms/{CLI_VERSION}",
-            "Accept": "application/vnd.github.v3+json",
-        },
-    )
+def _http_get(url: str) -> bytes:
+    req = urllib.request.Request(url, headers={"User-Agent": f"mdcms/{CLI_VERSION}"})
     ctx = ssl.create_default_context(cafile=certifi.where())
     with urllib.request.urlopen(req, timeout=15, context=ctx) as resp:
         return resp.read()
 
 
-def _download_tree(api_url: str, dest: Path, depth: int = 0):
-    items = json.loads(_github_get(api_url).decode("utf-8"))
-    for item in items:
-        item_dest = dest / item["name"]
-        if item["type"] == "dir":
-            item_dest.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
-            _download_tree(item["url"], item_dest, depth + 1)
-        elif item["type"] == "file":
-            click.echo(f"  {'  ' * depth}{item['name']}")
-            item_dest.parent.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
-            item_dest.write_bytes(_github_get(item["download_url"]))
+# ─── Template download ────────────────────────────────────────
 
-
-def download_template(dest: Path):
+def download_template(dest: Path, base_url: str = TEMPLATE_BASE_URL):
+    """Download the mdcms starter template using template-manifest.json."""
+    base = base_url.rstrip("/")
     click.echo(f"Downloading site template into {dest} ...")
     try:
-        _download_tree(GITHUB_CONTENTS_API, dest)
+        manifest_url = f"{base}/{TEMPLATE_MANIFEST}"
+        manifest = json.loads(_http_get(manifest_url).decode("utf-8"))
+        for rel in manifest.get("files", []):
+            file_dest = dest / rel
+            file_dest.parent.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
+            click.echo(f"  {rel}")
+            file_dest.write_bytes(_http_get(f"{base}/{rel}"))
+        for rel in manifest.get("dirs", []):
+            (dest / rel).mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
         click.echo(click.style("Template downloaded successfully.", fg="green"))
     except urllib.error.URLError as e:
         raise click.ClickException(f"Download failed: {e}")