Dev server and admin
kilim dev is where you work on a site. It builds into .kilim/dev, serves it at http://localhost:1923/ and builds again whenever you save.
npx kilim dev--port <port> picks another port. The dev server only listens on localhost; to try the site on a phone, build it and use kilim preview --host.
Open pages reload by themselves after each build. The dev server watches the config and the local modules it imports, content/, layouts/, overrides/, components/, blocks/, public/, styles/, themes/, the theme settings files and redirects.txt.
When only Markdown files change, only the pages that read them are rendered again: editing a post's body renders that post, while changing its title also renders the lists that show it. The terminal says how many pages were re-rendered. Changing anything else builds the whole site.
Unlike kilim build, the dev server builds drafts, pages whose publishAt is still ahead and pages whose expiresAt has passed. They appear in lists like other pages, but never in the sitemap or feeds, and each carries a badge such as "Draft · noindex, shown only in kilim dev" or "Scheduled: publishes Nov 8, 2026, 9:00 AM (UTC)". See drafts and scheduled pages.
When a build fails, the last page you had open stays on screen with an overlay that lists each error with its file and line:
content/blog/hello.md:3: date: must be an ISO 8601 date such as 2026-11-01 or 2026-11-01T09:00:00Z.Fix the file and save; the overlay goes away with the next successful build. Where no page was built yet, the server answers with an error page instead.
The badge and the overlay are added to responses only. They use no JavaScript and are never written to .kilim/dev or to dist/.
/__kilim/blocks lists every component and block of the theme and the site: where it comes from, its props with their types and defaults, and its examples rendered live. See Components and blocks.
/admin/ is a local editor for the site's files: content with a rich text editor, pages made of blocks, media, theme settings and the trash. Read on in Admin.