rustipo 0.6.0

Themeable Markdown-first static site generator for blogs, notes, docs, and personal sites
rustipo-0.6.0 is not a library.

Rustipo

Rustipo is an open-source, themeable static site generator written in Rust for blogs, notes, docs, personal sites, and other Markdown-first websites.

Rustipo is Markdown-first for content authoring and uses Tera templates for reusable layout. Rustipo separates layout from color selection: theme controls structure, while palette controls the generated color tokens.

Status

MVP complete, active post-MVP development.

CLI

  • rustipo new <site-name>
  • rustipo dev
  • rustipo build
  • rustipo serve
  • rustipo theme list
  • rustipo palette list
  • rustipo palette use <id>
  • rustipo theme install <source>
  • rustipo deploy github-pages

Quick Start

cargo run -- new my-site
cd my-site
cargo run -- dev

Production build:

cargo run -- build

Layout Without CSS Editing

Use config.toml for basic style controls:

[site.layout]
content_width = "98%"
top_gap = "2rem"
vertical_align = "center" # or "start"

[site.typography]
line_height = "1.5"
body_font = "\"Inter\", sans-serif"
heading_font = "\"Fraunces\", serif"
mono_font = "\"JetBrains Mono\", monospace"

[[site.typography.font_faces]]
family = "Inter"
source = "/fonts/inter.woff2"
weight = "400"
style = "normal"

Current Features

  • Markdown content pipeline with YAML frontmatter and draft filtering
  • Tera-based theme templates for reusable page layouts
  • Theme loading with inheritance support (extends) and contract validation
  • Explicit theme IDs for clearer selection and variant naming (family-variant)
  • Rich palette token aliases for expressive theme styling with semantic fallbacks
  • Config-driven custom font families and local @font-face injection
  • Refined default typography scale and prose rhythm for the starter theme
  • Built-in palettes:
    • dracula
    • default
    • catppuccin-frappe
    • catppuccin-latte
    • catppuccin-macchiato
    • catppuccin-mocha
    • gruvbox-dark
    • tokyonight-storm
    • tokyonight-moon
  • Pretty URL output in dist/
  • Section/tag/archive generation:
    • /blog/, /projects/
    • /tags/<tag>/
    • /blog/archive/
  • Output artifacts:
    • dist/rss.xml
    • dist/sitemap.xml
    • dist/search-index.json
  • Local preview server with watch mode and live reload (rustipo serve --watch)
  • Theme installation from GitHub shorthand/URL or local git repo
  • GitHub Pages deploy workflow scaffolding
  • Config-driven layout knobs (content_width, top_gap, vertical_align, line_height)
  • Optional static/custom.css override loaded after theme CSS

Anatomy Of A Rustipo Site

Rustipo projects are organized around a simple model:

  • Markdown = content
  • themes = layout
  • palettes = colors
  • static = assets
  • dist = generated output

Typical project layout:

my-site/
  config.toml
  content/
    index.md
    about.md
    resume.md
    blog/
    projects/
  palettes/
    dracula.toml
  static/
    fonts/
    img/
    js/
    favicon.svg
    custom.css
  themes/
    default/
      theme.toml
      templates/
      static/
  dist/

What each part is for:

  • config.toml is the main site configuration file
    • site title, description, theme, palette, layout, and typography live here
  • content/ is where you write Markdown content
    • each Markdown file becomes a page
    • content/index.md is the homepage
    • content/blog/ is for blog posts
    • content/projects/ is for project pages
    • nested custom pages are supported outside blog/ and projects/
  • themes/ contains reusable layout themes
    • templates/ holds Tera HTML templates
    • static/ holds theme CSS and theme assets
    • theme.toml describes the theme
  • palettes/ is for optional local color palettes
    • built-in palettes are embedded in Rustipo
    • local palettes let you add your own color systems with *.toml
  • static/ is for user assets copied into the final site
    • images, fonts, JavaScript, favicons, and optional custom.css belong here
  • dist/ is generated output
    • Rustipo recreates it when you build

Authoring Model

  • content/ is where authors write Markdown content
  • themes/<theme>/templates/ defines reusable layout with Tera templates
  • themes/<theme>/static/ contains theme CSS and assets
  • palette = "..." selects a built-in or local color palette
  • optional local palettes live under palettes/<palette>.toml
  • dist/ is generated output only

Example Project

Documentation

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT license (LICENSE.md).

Credits

Rustipo was inspired by my friend's project, Nerdfolio, created by @atasoya.