How to Edit a Website Made with AI: Sanity CMS and 5 More Admin Panels
A website from Claude, Lovable or v0 is ready in a day — but how do you change a price, a text or a photo later without a developer? I explain what a CMS is, why I choose Sanity, what it costs, and share a ready-made prompt that lets Claude move your site into an admin panel by itself.
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AI has become very fast at building websites: Claude, Lovable, v0 or Cursor can put together a good-looking site in a day. Then the business owner wants to change a price, add a testimonial or swap a photo — and finds out that all the copy is hard-coded. Every edit means a new request to the AI or a developer, a risk of breaking something and lost time.
The solution is an admin panel (a CMS): a separate dashboard where you change texts, images and prices like in a website builder, while the design and code stay untouched. In this article I explain how it works, why I choose Sanity for my websites, what it costs, and give you a ready-made prompt that lets Claude connect an admin panel to your site and move all the content into it.
Why a website made with AI is hard to edit
When AI generates a website, it puts the copy straight into the component code: the hero headline, prices, testimonials, FAQ answers. Visitors don’t notice the difference. For the owner, though, it means:
- You can’t change anything without code. Fixing one price means opening the project, finding the right file and redeploying the site.
- Every edit through AI is a risk. You ask it to change a sentence, and the AI also “improves” the layout or breaks the mobile version.
- You depend on one person. If a freelancer built the site, you message them about every comma — and wait.
- No roles and no history. You can’t give a manager access to the blog only, or restore yesterday’s version of a text.
An AI-built website without and with a CMS
- Copy in the code!!!!!!!!A price change means a request to AI or a developerRisk of breaking the layoutNo roles or change history
- Copy in the CMSYou edit it yourself in a form, like a website builderDesign and code stay untouchedTeam access and version history
What an admin panel (CMS) is, in plain words
A CMS (Content Management System) is a dashboard where you edit website content through ordinary forms: a “Headline” field, a “Price” field, an “Upload photo” button. The classic example is WordPress, where the website and the admin live together.
For websites built with AI, a headless CMS is a better fit: the admin panel stores only the content, and the website fetches it and displays it in its own design. The site stays fast and modern, and you get a convenient dashboard — without WordPress plugins, updates and vulnerabilities.
How a headless CMS works
- You change a text, photo or price and click “Publish”Admin panel
- Stored in the CMS cloud, separately from the designContent
- Pulls in the new content by itself — the design doesn’t changeWebsite
You edit → the website updates itself
Why I choose Sanity
I’ve tried different CMSs, and for business websites on Next.js (which is what Claude, v0 or Cursor most often build) I settled on Sanity. Here’s why:
- The admin lives on your domain. Sanity Studio is embedded right into the website at an address like yoursite.com/studio — nothing to install separately.
- Easy for non-technical people. Fields with human-readable names and hints, drag-and-drop blocks, photo uploads with a focal point (faces won’t get cropped on mobile).
- Editing right on the page. Visual Editing shows the live website: click a piece of text and edit exactly that.
- Sign in with Google or GitHub, team roles, change history and real-time collaboration.
- Works well with AI. Sanity has an official MCP server: Claude can read and update your website content on request, and the built-in AI Assist helps with copy and translations.
- A free plan that’s genuinely enough — details below.
How much Sanity costs
For a service website, landing page or small blog this means $0 a month for years. Paying only makes sense once you have a large team of editors or need private data. One important detail: on the free plan the data is public — that’s fine for website copy that every visitor sees anyway, but don’t store passwords, client enquiries or personal data in Sanity.
How to move an AI-built website into Sanity, step by step
The best part: you don’t have to copy the texts by hand. If the site was built in Claude Code or Cursor, the AI will create the admin panel, move the content and connect the pages itself. Your job is to prepare access and check the result.
- Create an account on sanity.io (with Google — takes a minute) and a new project. Copy its Project ID.
- Open the website project in Claude Code (or Cursor) — in the same folder as the code.
- Connect the Sanity MCP server with npx sanity@latest mcp configure — then Claude can work with your content directly. This step is optional but speeds up the move.
- Give Claude the prompt below and fill in your details in square brackets.
- Review the plan Claude suggests: which pages and fields will be in the CMS. Add anything that’s missing.
- Check the result: open /studio, change a test text, publish — and see whether the website updates.
- Deploy the website and add the environment variables Claude lists to your hosting.
You are a senior Next.js developer. This project is a website where all texts and images are hard-coded. Connect Sanity to it so the owner can change the content without a developer. Details: - Sanity Project ID: [your projectId], dataset: production - Website languages: [English / several — list them] - What the owner should be able to edit: [all section texts, prices, services, testimonials, case studies, FAQ, contacts, photos, blog] Tasks: 1. Analyse the project and list every page and section that contains content. First show me the plan of Sanity schemas — write code only after I confirm. 2. Create schemas with human-readable field names, hints (description) and validation: required fields, headline length limits, alt text for every image. 3. Embed Sanity Studio into the website at /studio (next-sanity package). 4. Move all current content into Sanity with a migration script — don’t type anything by hand. Upload images to Sanity with hotspot and alt. 5. Replace the hard-coded texts with data from Sanity (GROQ queries). Don’t change the design, layout or SEO tags. 6. Set up updates: after “Publish” in Studio, changes appear on the website (revalidation webhook). 7. Add Visual Editing (Presentation) so content can be edited by clicking text on the page. 8. Put tokens in environment variables and never commit them. Tell me which variables to add on the hosting. 9. Finally, write a short guide for the owner: how to sign in to /studio, change a text, photo and price, and publish. Work in stages: after each stage, check that the website builds and looks exactly as before.
Fill in your details in [square brackets]. For a large website, ask Claude to move it in parts: first the home page, then services, then the blog.
What you get in the end: a /studio page on your own domain with sections such as “Home”, “Services”, “Testimonials”, “Blog”. Change a price, click “Publish” — and a few seconds later the new price is live. You can’t break the design along the way: the CMS only contains content fields.
Other admin panels for your website: a shortlist
Sanity isn’t the only option. Here are CMSs that pair well with AI-built websites, and when each one makes sense:
Platform prices and limits change, so check the current plan on the CMS website before you choose. The list above is for websites on a modern stack; if your website is built in a builder like Wix or Squarespace, it already has an admin built in.
How to choose an admin panel for your website
- You or a non-technical manager will edit it — go with Sanity or Storyblok: the friendliest editors.
- Everything must live on your own server — Payload or Strapi.
- A small blog or docs edited by a developer — TinaCMS or Decap CMS.
- A multilingual website — Sanity, Payload and Storyblok handle translations well.
- Zero budget — Sanity’s free plan covers most service websites, and Payload and Decap are completely free.
Common mistakes when connecting a CMS
- Not everything was moved. Some copy (footer, buttons, SEO titles) stayed in the code — and only a developer can edit it again. Ask Claude to list everything that is still hard-coded.
- No website updates. You publish changes in the CMS, but the website still shows the old text. You need a revalidation webhook — it’s in the prompt above.
- Tokens ended up in the repository. Access keys should live only in environment variables on your hosting.
- No hints in the fields. Six months later nobody remembers how many characters fit in a headline. Add hints and length limits from the start.
- The CMS account belongs to the developer. Just like with a domain: you should own the Sanity project, and the developer should only be an invited user.
Summary
A website made with AI doesn’t have to be a black box. Connect a headless CMS and you can change copy, prices and photos as easily as in a website builder, while keeping the speed and design of a modern website. For most businesses the best start is Sanity: free, convenient and with official Claude support. And with the prompt above, the move takes hours, not weeks.
