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Core concepts

Workspaces, sites, pages, nodes, classes, tokens, breakpoints and environments in one page.

User guide

Malla has a small vocabulary. Every guide uses these words with the same meaning.

From the top down
WorkspaceYour team, members, plan and API keys.
SitePages, components, classes, tokens, CMS, tables.
PageA document: a tree of nodes, variables, interactions.
NodeOne element: type, props, styles, children.

Workspaces and sites

A workspace is your team. It owns members, a workspace plan (seats and AI usage) and API keys for agents. A workspace holds any number of sites. Each site has its own plan, pages, design system, content, data and domains.

Pages, nodes and documents

A page is a single document: a flat map of nodes plus page variables and interactions. A node is one element on the canvas, such as a section, frame, text, link, image, collection list, form, input or component instance. Each node has a type, props (its content and settings) and styles.

Pages have a path such as /pricing. A template page has a dynamic path like /blog/:slug and renders once per CMS item.

Classes, tokens and components

  • Design tokens are site-wide CSS variables for colours, fonts and spacing. Change a token, every use follows.
  • Classes are reusable style rules. A combo class builds on a parent class, like btn + btn-ghost.
  • Local styles sit on a single node and win over its classes.
  • Components are reusable pieces of layout with variants. Each copy on a page is an instance and can override texts, images, styles and visibility.

Breakpoints and states

Malla is desktop-first. You design the base (desktop, 1440 px) and override values on tablet (991 px and below) and mobile (767 px and below). Each breakpoint can also style the hover, focus and active states.

Data and logic

  • Bindings replace a literal value with an expression, such as item.title or vars.count > 0.
  • Variables hold page or site state.
  • Integrations connect a site to REST, GraphQL or the CMS; queries fetch data through them.
  • Workflows are lists of steps started by a trigger. Client workflows run in the browser; server workflows run on the edge.
  • Native tables are the site’s own SQL database for app data, guarded by row rules.

Environments

Every site has two environments. Staging lives on a Malla subdomain and is never indexed by search engines. Production is what your visitors see, on your own domain. Forms, submissions and server workflows are kept separately per environment.

People

Editor users build sites: owners, admins, editors, viewers and content editors. Visitors use the published site and can have their own accounts. The two never mix: separate tables, sessions and keys. See Team and roles and Visitor accounts.