README

GEO Starter is a Drupal CMS site-template scaffold for teams moving from headless/composable or legacy page/post CMS stacks into a governed foundation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). It provides sourceable services, answers, articles, and evidence records designed to be readable by humans and inspectable by retrieval systems.

This scaffold is intentionally lean. The Starter Kit/DDEV spike proved that drush site:export can generate a valid site template after a Drupal CMS site is installed, but raw export output from the default non-interactive Starter template was too broad to ship as a lean recipe. This package starts from the verified type: Site and drupal-recipe shape instead.

Status

Stable (1.0.0). Not Marketplace-ready.

Stability contract

From 1.0.0, the 1.x line promises discipline, not in-place upgrades:

1. Fresh install is the only supported path. Recipes are apply-once configuration artifacts; no hook_update_N migration ships. This is the Drupal CMS site-template posture, not a project deficiency.
2. Content-model freeze, additive-only. Within 1.x: no field deletions, no field-type or storage changes, no vocabulary restructuring, no changes to the @id scheme or entity-type set. New optional fields and bundles may be added. Breaking changes force 2.0.0.
3. Breaking-change documentation duty. If rule 2 must be broken (security or data-integrity only), the release notes carry an explicit manual migration note — as the 1.0.0-alpha4 office_hours change did.
4. Sample content is exempt — demo content in content/ may change freely within 1.x.

A stable-floor Composer project (default minimum-stability) can require this recipe without any stability override. The companion module drupal/geo_starter_jsonld carries its own parallel contract (see its README).

Current Scope

• Drupal CMS recipe package shape.
• Core modules needed for content modeling, moderation, JSON:API retrieval proof, media, taxonomy, paths, and views.
• Drupal CMS admin, media, privacy, and basic SEO recipes.
• Required package dependencies for Canvas and Paragraphs authoring lanes.
• Schema.org JSON-LD emission via the required companion module drupal/geo_starter_jsonld (its own composer package — a recipe cannot bundle a module): Service with provider ContactPoint/PostalAddress/hoursAvailable, Question/Answer, Article, CreativeWork evidence records with resolvable cross-page citation @ids, and gated FAQPage, HowTo, and ItemList from section content. Full canonical published pages only; never beyond what the visible page renders.
• A ten-bundle section library attached to Service, Answer, and Article nodes via field_sections: geo_starter_section, section_faq(+_item), section_step_list(+_item), section_card_grid, section_contact_panel (structured office_hours), section_cta, section_alert, section_media_text.
• Four component-composed Canvas sample pages (homepage, migration landing, topic hub, campaign) plus the front-page Canvas shell, all built from stock Mercury SDCs.
• Mercury as the public frontend theme, with geo_starter_jsonld_markup semantic templates for the ten section bundles.
• MVP content model config for Service, Answer, Article, Evidence Source, Audience and Topic.
• Public-service sample content: 4 Services, 8 Answers, 3 Articles, 6 Evidence Sources, seeded taxonomy terms, and worked FAQ, step-list, card-grid, and contact-panel sections that exercise the JSON-LD path on install.
• Planning docs frame the starter as a migration destination for headless/composable and page/post CMS patterns; importer automation is not included.
• Representative screenshot.webp captured from the composed homepage on a fresh install.

GEO Readiness

This section shows what the 1.x stable line supports now, what is partial, and what remains open. It focuses on capabilities a content platform needs when search engines and AI systems decide what to cite.

Content structure and operations

Retrieval and rendering output

Agent and ownership readiness

Migration readiness

Scope and honest limits

• AI citation, ranking, rich results, and answer-engine placement are never guaranteed. This recipe builds the structural foundation that helps; it does not promise outcomes.
• AI engines do not behave identically, so "AI visibility" is not a single switch. GEO Starter strengthens the rendered-HTML, structured-content, and cited-source path that documentation- and answer-citing engines favor. It does not, by itself, address community/forum or homepage-led citation patterns. Identify the engines your audience actually uses and measure per engine.

Provenance

This repository contains the starter package only. It does not vendor the externally hosted Drupal modules that were present in the broader research workspace. See docs/PROVENANCE.md.

Install And Release Readiness

• docs/INSTALL.md
• docs/LIMITATIONS.md
• docs/PUBLISHING_AND_ACCEPTANCE_PLAN.md
• docs/TECHNICAL_ACCEPTANCE_PLAN.md
• docs/PROJECT_PAGE_DRAFT.md
• docs/MARKETPLACE_SUBMISSION_PACKET.md
• docs/RELEASE_CHECKLIST.md
• docs/DEPENDENCIES.md
• docs/CONTENT_LICENSES.md
• docs/AUTHORING_MODEL.md
• docs/MIGRATION_MAP.md
• docs/SCHEMA_MAP.md

Validation

See docs/VALIDATION.md for the current smoke-test evidence and the helper scripts used to reproduce the sample-content and JSON:API checks.

Not In This Scaffold Yet

• GEO-specific theme/design-system implementation. The section bundles have lightly-styled semantic rendering via geo_starter_jsonld_markup; the node field-stack above them and a full visual design system are not included.
• Google Rich-Results check on the emitted JSON-LD (schema.org hosted validator passed; URL-mode rich-results run is still pending — required before any rich-result eligibility claim).
• Turnkey source-CMS import automation.
• Marketplace submission metadata, final support commitments, or preview URL.
• Required AI provider, agent, or credential setup.