Content Modeling Best Practices

Helps you make better decisions when designing content schemas for headless CMSes like Sanity. The guidance is organized around specific modeling questions: should this be a reference or embedded? Is this content reusable enough to split out? Am I accidentally building page-shaped schemas instead of content-shaped ones? Instead of dumping everything at once, it points you to focused references on separation of concerns, the reuse spectrum, and taxonomy patterns. The framing is refreshingly pragmatic: content is data, not pages, and your model should work for channels that don't exist yet. Useful whether you're starting fresh or refactoring a mess.

skills.sh installs: 5K
GitHub stars: 197
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add sanity-io/agent-toolkit --skill content-modeling-best-practices --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

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Content Modeling Best Practices

Principles for designing structured content that's flexible, reusable, and maintainable. These concepts apply to any headless CMS but include Sanity-specific implementation notes.

When to Apply

Reference these guidelines when:

Starting a new project and designing the content model
Evaluating whether content should be structured or free-form
Deciding between references and embedded content
Planning for multi-channel content delivery
Refactoring existing content structures

Core Principles

Content is data, not pages — Structure content for meaning, not presentation
Single source of truth — Avoid content duplication
Future-proof — Design for channels that don't exist yet
Editor-centric — Optimize for the people creating content