Marmite

Marmite [Markdown makes sites] is a very! simple static site generator.

I’m a big user of other SSGs but it is frequently frustrating that it takes so much setup to get started.
Just having a directory of markdown files and running a single command sounds really useful.
— Michael, marmite user.

How it works

It does “one” simple thing only:

• Reads all .md files on the input directory.
• Using CommonMark parse it to HTML content.
• Extract optional metadata from frontmatter or filename.
• Generated html file for each page.
• Outputs the rendered static site to the output folder.

It also handles generating or copying static/ and media/ to the output dir.

Before you start, you should know

1. Marmite is meant to be simple, don’t expect complex features
2. Marmite is for bloggers, so writing and publishing articles in chronological order is the main use case.
3. The generated static site is flat HTML by default (./{name}.html|rss|json). Workspaces can produce subdirectory-based multi-site layouts.
4. Taxonomies: tags:, stream:, series:, authors:, and languages: (i18n)
5. Marmite uses the date: attribute to differentiate posts from pages

Features

• Everything embedded in a single binary.
• Zero-Config to get started.
  • Optionally fully configurable via marmite.yaml
  • Configurable markdown parser (CommonMark extensions, rendering options)
• Common-mark + Github Flavoured Markdown + Extensions.
• Raw HTML allowed.
• Emojis :smile:, spoiler ||secret||.
• Wikilinks [[name|url]] and Obsidian links [[page]].
• Markdown alerts (GitHub-style callouts).
• Backlinks and related content.
• Tags.
• Multi authors with profile pages.
• Multi streams (separate content in different listings).
• Series support (ordered, chronological content groups with navigation).
• Language streams / i18n (multilingual content with auto-discovery, translation links, hreflang SEO tags).
• Draft content management (filtered from feeds and search).
• Pagination.
• Static search index with inline match previews.
• RSS Feeds (index, tags, authors, streams, languages).
• Next/previous post navigation (stream-aware).
• Built-in HTTP server with WebSocket live reload.
• Auto rebuild when content changes.
• Shortcodes (YouTube, Spotify, cards, galleries, table of contents, custom templates).
• Image gallery with automatic thumbnail generation.
• Automatic image resizing (parallel processing, incremental builds, configurable quality).
• Media organization (slug-based subfolders, @/ shorthand, content subfolder media).
• Automatic sitemap generation.
• --show-urls dry run to preview all site URLs without building.
• File mappings (copy arbitrary files during site generation).
• Redirect aliases (frontmatter aliases field generates redirect pages for old URLs).
• Internal link validation (build-time checking, optional strict failure mode).
• IndieWeb compliance (microformats, semantic HTML).
• Markdown source publishing alongside HTML.
• Built-in theme
  • Light and Dark modes.
  • Multiple colorschemes.
  • Fully responsive.
  • Spotlight search.
  • Easy to replace the index page and add custom CSS/JS.
  • Easy to customize Tera templates.
  • Math and Mermaid diagrams (native build-time SVG or client-side JS).
  • Build-time syntax highlighting via arborium.
  • Commenting system integration.
  • Banner images and og: tags.
• Theme system with remote theme installation.
• CLI to start a new theme from scratch.
• Workspace multi-site support (single command builds, config inheritance, cross-site references).
• AT Protocol / standard.site integration (publish posts to the decentralized social web).
• Embedded AI agent skills for AI-assisted site management.
• Available via cargo, pip/uvx, Homebrew, AUR, FreeBSD, Docker, and install script.

Installation

curl -sS https://marmite.blog/install.sh | sh

Also available via cargo, pip/uvx, Homebrew, Arch Linux, FreeBSD, and Docker. See the full installation guide for all methods.

Usage

It’s simple, really!

$ marmite folder_with_markdown_files path_to_generated_site
Site generated at path_to_generated_site/

CLI

$ marmite --help
Marmite is the easiest static site generator.

Usage: marmite [OPTIONS] [INPUT_FOLDER] [OUTPUT_FOLDER] [COMMAND]

Commands:
  atproto  Manage atproto / standard.site integration
  help     Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

Arguments:
  [INPUT_FOLDER]   Input folder containing markdown files
  [OUTPUT_FOLDER]  Output folder to generate the site [default: `input_folder/site`]

Options:
  -v, --verbose...            Verbosity level (0-4) [default: 0 warn]
  -w, --watch                 Detect changes and rebuild the site automatically
      --serve                 Serve the site with a built-in HTTP server
      --bind            Address to bind the server [default: 0.0.0.0:8000]
  -c, --config        Path to custom configuration file [default: marmite.yaml]
      --init-templates        Initialize templates in the project
      --start-theme     Initialize a theme with templates and static assets
      --set-theme      Download and set a theme from a remote URL or local folder
      --generate-config       Generate the configuration file
      --init-site             Init a new site with sample content and default configuration
      --force                 Force the rebuild of the site even if no changes detected
      --shortcodes            List all available shortcodes
      --show-urls             Show all site URLs organized by content type
      --skill                 Print the embedded agent skill document (SKILL.md) to stdout
      --skill-install         Install the skill into .agents/skills/
      --skill-install-claude  Install the skill into .claude/skills/ for Claude Code
      --new            Create a new post with the given title
  -e                          Edit the file in the default editor
  -p                          Set the new content as a page
  -t                    Set the tags for the new content (comma separated)
      --site            Target site within a workspace
      --skip-image-resize     Skip image resizing during build
      --check-internal-links  Check internal links during build
      --strict-internal-links Fail the build on broken internal links
  -h, --help                  Print help
  -V, --version               Print version

Run marmite --help for the full list of options including site metadata overrides, search, pagination, and other configuration flags.

Live reload in development

When running with --serve --watch (or --serve -w), Marmite automatically rebuilds on file changes and refreshes the browser via WebSocket. The default theme includes live reload out of the box. For custom themes, add this snippet to your base template:

Getting started

Read a tutorial on how to get started https://marmite.blog/getting-started.html and create your blog in minutes.

Docs

Read more on how to customize templates, add comments etc on https://marmite.blog/

That’s all!

Marmite is very simple.

If this simplicity does not suit your needs, there are other awesome static site generators.

Here are some that I recommend:

• Cobalt
• Zola
• Zine