Headless CMS
A headless CMS is a content store with no front end of its own. Editors work in its admin; the site or app pulls records over an {{term:api|API}} and renders them however it wants.
Contentful, Sanity, and similar tools are this shape. You model types and fields, people fill records, and one or more front ends subscribe. A marketing site, a mobile app, and a kiosk can share the same article without copying it.
Choose it when the same content has to appear in more than one place, or when the front end is a custom React app that should not also be an editor. Skip it when one team edits one Framer site — a second product is then a tax, not a store.
The cost is the join. Preview is “almost the site,” schemas drift from the front-end types, and you now have two logins. We use a headless CMS when the audience is genuinely more than one surface; otherwise the CMS in the tool you built in is enough.
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