Developer guide
Tolk Starter is a website kit for companies that publish in several languages and markets. It is a Payload 3 and Next.js 16 application: the site and its admin run in one Node server, with content in MongoDB or PostgreSQL and uploads on disk.
What you get:
- A block library. Editors build pages from about fifty blocks, all themed from one set of colour tokens.
- Languages throughout. Every text has a version per language, every page an address per language, and the site falls back to the default language where a translation is missing.
- Content modules that can be switched off one by one: news, jobs, dealers, case studies and a product catalog.
- AI translation, optional. With an Anthropic API key, editors translate, proofread and review in the admin, following a glossary, a style guide and a translation memory.
- Roles: admin, editor and translator.
Where to start #
- Install in ten minutes: the kit running on your machine, with the demo site.
- Configuration: environment variables, languages, modules, theme and the optional services.
- Deploy: the Docker image and what a server needs.
- Extend: add blocks, modules and languages.
Then Roles and access, Testing, Updating Tolk Starter, Upgrading Payload, Troubleshooting, Recording a product walkthrough, Demo pictures and Demo translations.
The repository #
| Path | What it holds |
|---|---|
src/collections, src/globals | Payload collections and globals |
src/blocks | The layout blocks, the small blocks used inside them, and the block renderer |
src/registry | Every collection with public addresses, declared once |
src/modules, src/modules.config.ts | How each registered collection renders, and the module switches |
src/i18n/locales.ts | The site's languages |
src/theme/tokens.ts | The colour tokens |
src/access | The role rules |
src/jobs | Background jobs |
src/endpoints, src/utilities/translate | The AI translation features |
scripts | The demo seed and the renderer of its pictures, other seeds, the docs tooling and the Docker smoke test |
tests | Unit, integration and end-to-end tests |
CLAUDE.md | The conventions the code follows, written for people and AI coding agents alike |
Read CLAUDE.md before you change the code: it explains the rules the tests enforce.