devtools.fm: Developer Tools, Open Source, Software Development Simen Svale - sanity.io
Mar 17, 2025
Simen Svale, Co-founder and CTO of Sanity.io, shares insights on building a developer-first content platform. He discusses his transition from agency work to creating a scalable CMS that prioritizes developer experience. The conversation explores Sanity's innovative features like Portable Text, a structured text format, and GROQ, a unique query language. Simen also talks about AI-assisted authoring in Sanity Create and future plans for richer automation and enhanced content workflows, aimed at revolutionizing content management.
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From Agency Tool To Startup
- Simen and his co-founders built a CMS as an internal tool after agency work and big clients like OMA exposed content needs.
- MIT's reaction convinced them to turn the internal tool into the Sanity startup.
One Platform for Editors And Developers
- Sanity targets both editors (as a CMS/admin UI) and developers (as a framework) with the same platform.
- That duality enables tiny projects to scale up to global operations like Skims and Burger King.
What A Content OS Actually Is
- A content operating system combines a content-optimized database, distribution, automation, and UI customization.
- Embedding automations and backend compute into projects makes content processes first-class parts of the platform.