What's New - June 2025

Ever seen content teams spend hours wrestling across disconnected tools, only to end up with a fragmented digital experience? This month, we're solving that problem with our Spring Release 2025: The Content Operating System.

It's our biggest release ever and is a result of thinking long and hard on how to enable developers to tailor how content works across your entire organization—backed by our recent $85M Series C funding round, which allows us to invest in improving Sanity as a platform and as a company further. (That's what the money is for).

In this update, you'll get a quick recap of of the new stuff in the Spring Release, some additional platform improvements we've shipped, and an exciting announcement: our first developer not-really-a-conference-maybe-more-like-a-festival in New York City, September 30th (with more details to follow soon).

I sat down with the engineers behind some cool features you'll want to try:

• The Content Operations Agent (private beta) with Rosti showing how it works like a helpful co-worker who knows your Studios inside out—ask it anything in natural language and watch it find, edit, and improve your content.
• Overlay plugins: (GitHub repository available now, with docs to follow shortly!) with James & Rupert demonstrating granular editing control right in Presentation.

Spring Release 2025: Your complete guide 🚀

On May 8th, we launched the Content Operating System with a bunch of new features and products.

Feeling a little overwhelmed? I get it.

It's a foundational shift of the platform and eight new products / features / tools is a lot to take in. Let me walk you through what each one does, then I'll show you the best way to get hands-on with what matters most to your projects.

Quick recap

📊 Dashboard & Insights – Your content command center that unifies all Sanity resources across projects with automatic activity tracking.

🔧 App SDK – Build custom content experiences with live updating document lists, automatic draft creation, and multiplayer editing

⚡ Functions – Serverless automation for everything that happens next—validate content, trigger external services, or transform content with AI Agent Actions

🎨 Canvas – From rough draft to structured content with AI—no more copy-pasting between tools

🤖 Agent Actions – Schema-aware AI that validates outputs against your content's structure, eliminating tedious reformatting work

📚 Media Library – Centralized asset management across all your projects

🤖 Content Operations Agent – AI agent that audits, organizes, and suggests content updates (private beta, more on this later)

📖 Revamped Docs – CMD+F anything, ask AI, copy as markdown, new reference docs, and more

New to the Content Operating System?

Start by visiting our dedicated landing page for the complete overview and launch video.

Ready to dive deeper?

Our updated documentation now includes detailed getting-started guides for each new tool.

Learn by doing (with code examples, demos and step-by-step tutorials):

• App SDK: Read the comprehensive blog post and try Simeon's (early access) Learn course on using App SDK to master useDocuments, useEditDocument, and other React hooks.
• Functions: Follow our step-by-step guide to create your first function that patches documents and triggers external services.
• Canvas: Discover how to streamline your writing workflow with automatic content mapping and collaborative editing features.
• Agent Actions: Learn to implement Generate, Transform, and Translate actions with proper schema validation and error handling.
• Dashboard & Insights: Read the comprehensive guide to your new content command center and discover how Insights automatically tracks your content activity.

Have more questions?

Head over to Discord where we have dedicated support channels for each new feature. Our engineers have been quick to answer questions and fix bugs when reported.

Working for an agency?

Tom Smith, Senior Solution Engineer, has written a comprehensive guide for agencies navigating Spring 2025 organization changes. It covers when to create separate organizations for clients, project transfer processes, and billing considerations—essential reading as we shift to organization-centric features.

Content Operations Agent (Private beta)

What if you could get instant reviewing of your content - someone who systematically audits your documents, spots gaps, and suggests improvements without missing anything?

The Content Operations Agent works like a diligent co-worker. Think of it as having a content expert collaborating with you, catching things you might miss while you focus on the creative decisions (and still have full control over what and when to publish!).

Want a first look at what this looks like? I sat down with Rosti to see it in action.

Watch the full conversation here →

The Agent relies on our recently released Sanity MCP Server and Agent Actions—it's all connected to give you this seamless content review experience.

What else we've been building

Beyond our major release, we've continued improving core platform features based on the latest changelog updates:

Save frequently used GROQ queries in Vision

Finding yourself running the same queries in Vision all the time? Maybe you have a "GROQ query" note somewhere that you have to copy-paste from? (I do!)

Well, no more!

Save your queries: You can now save frequently-used GROQ queries in Vision, making it much easier to iterate on complex queries during development.

Structure Builder divider improvements

Structure Builder's divider() method let you add visual dividers in a document list to "group" list items to make it easier to parse. Now, you can add a title and translations to the divider in the structure builder, making it even easier to organize and localize your document list experience:

S.divider().title('Products')

Custom GROQ functions

The query endpoint now support custom defined GROQ Functions in all versions above v1. This allows you to create modular, reusable parts of queries for more maintainable code.

You can test it out by defining a reusable function like this:

// Define a reusable function
fn ex::name($person) = $person-> { "name": firstName + " " + lastName };
*[_type == "post" && defined(slug.current)] {
  title,
  slug,
  publishedAt,
  "author": ex::name(author),
  "excerpt": pt::text(body[0...3])
} | order(publishedAt desc) [0...10]

Read the documentation for more information, and stay tuned for more examples (and videos!).

Overlay plugins

Instead of diving through documents to find what you need to edit, this set of Overlay plugins gives you granular control over individual elements by adding custom controls and information directly to your presentation overlay.

I sat down with James and Rupert to see this in action—from simple word counters to a full Pokemon-style level editor that lets you edit game tiles directly on the visual interface. Rupert's game demo perfectly shows when editing in Presentation beats the Structure tool: instead of scrolling through hundreds of array items, you can see exactly what you're editing and where.

Read the documentation on Custom overlay components →

Watch the full demo here →

Schema deployment

The CLI now supports schema deployment, enabling features like Dashboard, Agent Actions, and improved Canvas experience by allowing Sanity's apps to understand your schema beyond just Studio. This foundational change unlocks better integration across the entire Content Operating System.

Learn more about schema deployment →

React compiler integration

Sanity Studio now uses the React Compiler RC, delivering 20-30% performance improvements across our codebase. We've been working closely with the React team as part of their working group, testing the compiler on our most performance-critical libraries like @sanity/ui, @portabletext/editor, and react-rx.

The results speak for themselves: our performance testing suite shows significantly higher frames per second (FPS) during editing interactions—the kind of latency that really impacts creative professionals staying in their flow.

Read the full technical breakdown →

Post Spring Release updates

Our Engineers didn't stop iterating on our new features and products after our big release. Below are some key improvements to Agent Actions, Functions and Canvas that you may have missed.

• Agent Actions no longer mutate published documents by default. They'll create drafts instead, which means safer content operations and better workflow control.
• Use forcePublishedWrite: true if you need to write directly to published documents.

New Agent Actions:

• Patch: Schema-aware patching that ensures your operations follow your content model. Unlike the regular client.patch API, this validates paths and values against your schema, preventing accidental data corruption.
• Prompt: Make LLM requests without mutating documents. Perfect for getting AI suggestions or analysis without changing your content.

Enhanced image generation:

You can now generate and transform images directly by targeting image asset paths, making AI-powered visual content creation much more flexible.

TypeScript support for Functions

Build type-safe serverless workflows with full TypeScript integration and official type packages. When you run sanity blueprints add function and select TypeScript, you'll get prompted to include the type package and handler automatically.

Enhanced Canvas Studio integration

Publish Canvas-linked documents directly from Studio and add them to Content Releases without switching contexts. We've also simplified studio linking—compatible Studio versions now automatically appear in Canvas as valid targets for content mapping.

Notable bug fixes 🐛

• Resolved issues with document actions not showing for live edit documents
• Fixed HTTP host/port configuration handling in CLI
• Corrected problems with releases and document version operations
• Improved auto-update prompts for outdated dependencies
• Various stability improvements and dependency updates

Community contributions 🌟

The Sanity community keeps building impressive tools and resources. Here are May's highlights:

Plugins and tools

• Bou Optimizer by Teemu Lahjalahti: Optimize images and PDFs during upload

Templates and Starters

• Sanity Photon by Soufiane: Minimal e-commerce starter with Shopify and Next.js
• NextMedal by Ali Aljumaili: Superior Sanity + Next.js template for professional sites

Showcase Projects

• DogYearsIO by Charles Edwards: AI-powered dog age calculator and breed identifier
• 1367 Studio: After building 20+ projects with Next.js and Sanity, this agency rebuilt their own website using their proven stack.

Guides and Articles

• "How to Implement Text Wrap Around Images in Sanity CMS" by Tamba Monrose at ContentWrap
• "6 Ways Sanity Update 2025 Empowers Teams" by Jakub Dakowicz at Pagepro
• "How we use MDC rules" by Jono at Roboto Studio
• "AI-enabled features from Sanity's Spring Release" by Hex Digital
• "Sanity AI Assist: Automating Content Creation Tasks" by Nearform

Customer Spotlights ⭐

Lady Gaga: Building for speed, scale, and creative control

Our latest customer story showcases how Lady Gaga's team achieved:

• Zero custom APIs needed (thanks to GROQ)
• 300% faster release cycles
• 90% of updates now handled by the content team

The site won three Webby Awards and handles massive traffic spikes during album drops without breaking a sweat.

Read the full story →

Customer stories on camera

Want an insights into how other teams actually solve complex content problems? These videos aren't polished case studies, they're real conversations about the implementation behind some impressive workflows.

Elemeno Health – Medical knowledge doubles every 73 days, but it takes 17 years for best practices to reach staff. See how Elemeno tackles this with just-in-time, hyper-localized digital resources built on Sanity's multi-format structured content.

See how they manage complex medical content →

loveholidays – Simen and I discuss content operations at the British Library before heading to the loveholidays office to see how they manage content for 50,000 hotels with automated pipelines and templates.

Watch the AI content pipeline in action →

Events

Recent Events

The Sanity Showcase Meetup (May 22nd) featured three presentations:

App SDK is all I ever wanted: by Simeon Griggs (Principal Educator at Sanity)

A walkthrough of feature-rich App SDK applications built for the Spring Release demo.

GROQD: Locking down your Sanity types by Curtis Cartier (Senior Frontend Engineer at Webstacks)

A deep dive into GROQD, a third-party TypeScript inference library built on top of Zod.

Building Automated Translation Pipelines with Sanity by Matt Koevort (Senior Software Engineer at loveholidays)

How loveholidays built automated translation systems to support European expansion using Sanity's internationalization plugin.

Upcoming Events

Builder talk: How Morning Brew unified their content operations

Did you know Morning Brew delivers fresh content to 4M+ subscribers every single day? Find out how they manage 14 different newsletters—each with unique branding and editorial needs—all powered by just two Sanity Studios.

Join Simen (CTO, Sanity) with Morning Brew's Emily Diamond (SVP Head of Product) and Erin Allen (Senior Product Designer) as they share their Sanity setup, automated workflows, and how they scaled from newsletter to media empire.

When: June 17th, 2:00 PM – 2:30 PM EDT
Where: Streaming online

Register here →

Code && Content Podcast 🎙️

Simeon's been productive this past month with four episodes exploring the intersection of code and content.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel so you don't miss an episode, or to the RSS feed if you prefer audio only!

Michelle Bakels | How React Miami took over the internet

React Miami co-founder Michelle shares insights on creating the leading React conference brand and what it takes to build events that matter.

Knut Melvær | Markdown's biggest hater

Sanity's own Knut discusses why developers love Markdown but everyone else struggles with it, and how Portable Text offers a better alternative for structured content.

Mark Techson | Power of positive content

From Google engineer to game show host, Mark's journey proves the power of positive content and staying enthusiastic in the "Age of AI."

Espen Hovlandsdal | Building everyone's CMS

here's irony in Sanity telling you not to build your own CMS, since that's exactly how we started. Espen (who's been at Sanity from the very start!) shares the story of how we didn't just build our own CMSwe built yours.

Community update: We've moved to Discord

Important: We're officially transitioning from Slack to Discord!

While Slack will remain open until August 8th, we're no longer providing support there.

Join Discord now →

Our Discord features:

• Dedicated help channels for quick support (including an #ask-ai channel trained on the Sanity docs to help you get unstuck faster)
• Specialized channels for each Spring Release feature
• Direct access to our engineering team

That's all for June!

The Spring Release represents years of work coming together, and we're just getting started. Whether you're exploring Canvas for the first time, building your first App SDK application, or setting up Functions for content automation, we're here to help you succeed.

Have questions about any of the new features? Jump into our Discord community and let us know what you're building!

Built something cool with Sanity? Share it in our #showcase channel and you'll get feature in the next "What's New"!