Pull-first Workflow

The pull-first workflow is for teams that already have content types in Contentful and want to start managing them with ctkit. Instead of recreating your content model by hand, ctkit generates TypeScript schema files from your existing space.

How it works

pull → review generated schemas → adjust → continue with migration or push

1. Pull — ctkit reads your Contentful content types and generates schema files.
2. Review — inspect the generated code, make adjustments.
3. Continue — switch to the migration or push workflow for ongoing changes.

Step by step

1. Pull your content types

ctkit pull

ctkit connects to your Contentful space, reads every content type, and generates a .ts file for each one in your schemas/ directory:

✓ Pulled 5 content types
  schemas/blogPost.ts
  schemas/author.ts
  schemas/category.ts
  schemas/navigation.ts
  schemas/siteSettings.ts

To pull a specific content type:

ctkit pull --content-type blogPost

To overwrite existing local files:

ctkit pull --force

2. Review the generated schemas

Open the generated files and verify they look correct. ctkit maps Contentful field types, validations, and settings into their schema equivalents as accurately as possible.

ctkit check

If check reports everything is in sync, the generated schemas faithfully represent your remote content model.

3. Make adjustments

You may want to:

• Reorganize files — move schemas into subdirectories (e.g., schemas/blog/blogPost.ts). ctkit auto-discovers all .ts and .js files regardless of nesting.
• Add comments — annotate fields with context that only exists in your team’s heads.
• Clean up names — rename the exported variables for consistency.
• Review edge cases — complex field configurations, deeply nested validations, or unusual content type setups may need manual tweaking.

4. Continue with your preferred workflow

From here, you have two options:

Migration workflow (recommended for teams):

# Make a schema change, then:
ctkit generate
ctkit migrate
ctkit check

Push workflow (for rapid iteration):

# Make a schema change, then:
ctkit push

Tips

• Run check after pulling. If the output shows no differences, you know the pull was accurate. If there are diffs, review and adjust before continuing.
• Commit the generated files. Once you’re happy with the schemas, commit them to source control. They’re now the source of truth for your content model.
• Pull is a one-time operation. You use it to bootstrap your local schemas. After that, you make changes locally and push or migrate them to Contentful — not the other way around.
• System content types are skipped. ctkit won’t pull its own internal content types (like ctkit_migration_history).