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The New Publishing Standard in the AI Era and What It Replaces
The Gist
Enhanced asset controls. Users gain select fields, AI metadata and persistent preferences.
Duplicate image management. System finds and groups identical images post-upload.
Broader user access. Smaller teams can now self-serve subscriptions, increasing adoption.
Contentstack on Sept. 23 released a set of updates to its Assets add-on that give content teams more control over metadata, automate tagging with AI and surface duplicate images for cleanup. The company also introduced self-service account creation and subscription management, opening the platform to smaller teams and individual builders.
The updates include a select-type user-defined field for consistent metadata entry, background duplicate-image detection, AI-generated tags and alt text at upload, AI-suggested metadata via API and persistent user preferences that follow users across browsers and devices. Company officials said the duplicate-management feature is rolling out gradually and may not yet be available to all customers. Assets remains a paid add-on.
Separately, Contentstack now lets anyone create an account, choose a subscription tier — Free, Build or Growth — and manage billing without contacting sales. The company positioned this as a fit for smaller teams that want to start building and scale at their own pace.
Contentstack September 2026 Feature Breakdown
The September 2026 Assets release spans five capabilities and a new self-service tier.
Capability | Description |
|---|---|
Select-type user-defined field | Enforces consistent metadata via dropdown, radio or checkbox lists |
Duplicate management for images | Detects identical images in the background and groups them for review |
AI metadata at upload | Auto-generates tags and alt text without overwriting user-supplied values |
AI-suggested metadata via API | Exposes AI-generated tags, alt text, colors and safety flags programmatically |
Self-service subscriptions | Lets anyone sign up, choose a tier and manage billing independently |
Bulk Actions Now Reach 10,000 Entries
Beyond Assets, Contentstack shipped several updates to its headless CMS in September. A Sept. 15 update lets editors select every entry a search or filter returns, rather than only the entries on the current page. They can then publish, unpublish, delete or add to a release in one pass.
A single action covers up to 10,000 entries and runs as one background job, which can be tracked in the Stack Bulk Task Queue. Select all does not support bulk workflow updates or export.
Multiple Identity Providers Per Organization
On Sept. 11, Contentstack added support for up to five SAML 2.0 identity providers in a single organization. Each connection has its own certificate, session policy, role mapping and login URL. The company pointed to organizations whose users span separate identity systems. Examples include a parent company and an acquired subsidiary on different tenants, employees and contractors on different providers, or a staged migration where both providers must stay live.
Existing SSO setups are unaffected. The feature is not enabled by default, and organizations must request it through Contentstack support.
Developers Face an API Behavior Change
Also on Sept. 11, Contentstack changed how its Content Delivery API and Content Management API handle the limit query parameter, which now accepts positive integers only. Previously, passing limit=0 returned every matching record. Now it returns the default number of records, which is 100 per request. According to the company, the old behavior could cause requests on large stacks to time out.
Integrations that relied on limit=0 to fetch full result sets must now paginate using the skip parameter. They can pass include_count=true to retrieve the total number of available records.
A Sept. 7 update also lets developers resolve nested embedded entries and assets in the JSON Rich Text Editor in a single GET request. They pass include_embedded_items[]=RECURSIVE, with depth capped at five levels. Contentstack said existing behavior is unchanged unless developers opt in.
Recent Contentstack News
Contentstack made its most consequential strategic move in June, launching its Agentic Experience Platform (AXP) — a deliberate break from the digital experience platform (DXP) category. Built on three coordinated layers — Content Cloud, Data Cloud and Agent OS — the architecture reflects CEO Neha Sampat's argument that content without context can't personalize and agents without governance produce unreliable results.
Analyst validation preceded the relaunch. In early 2026, Contentstack earned recognition as a Visionary in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms and as a Leader in the Forrester Wave CMS report — the only pure headless CMS provider to achieve Leader status in that evaluation.
Contentstack is bringing the AXP narrative directly to customers at ContentCon Chicago 2026 on Oct. 27–28.
AI Metadata & DAM: What Works
AI-generated metadata is reshaping enterprise asset management, but productivity gains depend almost entirely on the quality of content foundations underneath.
Metadata as the Operating Layer
Machine learning models can auto-tag images and video, generate alt text, transcribe audio and summarize content, reducing manual tagging and accelerating retrieval. But those gains require context: AI needs to know not just what an asset is, but where it can be used, who it targets and how it performs.
Agentic workflows — autonomous systems that can brief a campaign, pull assets, generate variations and route for approval — depend on the governance of the content they draw from.
Governance as Workflow Infrastructure
Effective DAM governance operates behind the scenes, filtering expired or restricted assets so teams only see what is usable and on-brand. Key shifts include:
Embedded controls: Governance must live inside the tools teams already use, not as a separate approval layer
AI-specific asset classes: AI-generated images and copy require distinct metadata schemas, approval workflows and usage policies
Permissions by context: Curated portals deliver the right content by region, language or business unit
Contentstack Background
Contentstack, founded in 2018, provides a composable DXP for digital, marketing, IT and product leaders at mid-market and large global organizations. The platform offers API-driven content management, omnichannel personalization and governance features built on a MACH architecture.
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