Connecting a site

Once you’ve created a site, switch your backend to turbo-github, or turbo-gitlab if the repo is on GitLab.

Install the beta release

The Turbo backends aren’t in the stable release yet. They ship on npm under the beta dist-tag.

<!-- track the tag -->
<script src="https://unpkg.com/decap-cms@beta/dist/decap-cms.js"></script>

<!-- or pin a version -->
<script src="https://unpkg.com/decap-cms@3.17.0-beta.0/dist/decap-cms.js"></script>

npm install decap-cms-app@beta            # tracks the tag
npm install decap-cms-app@3.17.0-beta.0   # pinned

Tracking @beta keeps you current; pinning is safer, since a beta can ship breaking changes in a minor version.

Configuration

backend:
  name: turbo-github # or turbo-gitlab
  turbo_site_id: your-site-id
  branch: main # optional

turbo_site_id is the UUID on the site’s Overview tab, and the only value you have to set by hand. Everything else the backend needs — the Supabase project, the proxy endpoint, the repo — is fetched from the control plane at load time, keyed on that ID. Infrastructure changes on Turbo’s side never require a config.yml edit.

repo and branch

These behave differently from every other backend, and differently from each other:

• repo is ignored. The value on the site row wins. The proxy resolves permissions from it, so a stale local copy is exactly what produces requested repo does not match. Change the repo in the dashboard, not here.
• branch wins if you set it, and falls back to the site row if you don’t. That is deliberate: one Turbo site can back several deploys of the same repo, each editing its own branch — production on main, staging on develop — with the same turbo_site_id in both configs.

Logging in

The login screen shows Login with Turbo and opens a popup. You need access to that specific site — a Turbo account alone isn’t enough.

Sessions refresh in the background, so editors aren’t logged out mid-edit.

Commit attribution

Different on each backend — check your own git log before assuming.

GitLab sends your Turbo display name and account email as author_name and author_email, so you are the commit author. The committer is the GitLab account that authorized the Git connection.

GitHub makes the App the author and credits you on a trailer:

Author: decap-turbo[bot] <...>

    Update post "my first post"

    Co-authored-by: Your Name <you@example.com>

GitHub’s createCommitOnBranch authors as whoever holds the token, with no override. The alternative is the multi-step REST sequence, which costs three extra round trips on every save. GitHub renders co-author avatars and counts the commit toward your contributions, so attribution is still visible — on the trailer rather than the author field. Point any tooling that reads git log --author at the trailer instead.

Config path

Turbo reads your collections from the file at the site’s config path to support per-collection permissions.

Media uploads

To keep uploads out of your repo, see Media library. Pro and above.