Slate

KISS, reliable, and accessible.

Slate is a lightweight Python CLI tool for converting Markdown to accessible static HTML pages, Gemtext, and Gophermaps. Designed for blogs, knowledge bases, and personal sites where simplicity is paramount.

Features

• Semantic HTML: Converts Markdown to accessible HTML5 with semantic tags.
• Multi-Format: Outputs to HTML, Gemini (Gemtext), and Gopher.
• Smart Updates: intelligently updates existing files without needing to re-specify arguments.
• Dynamic Links: Automatically converts [!MD-PAGE] links to .html in the output, keeping your Markdown portable.
• Customizable: Integrates with Jinja2 templates and outputs CSS-ready classes.
• Extensible: Easily add custom Markdown tokens via a registry system.

Quickstart

Install via pipx (recommended)

pipx install slate-md

Or, with pip:

pip install slate-md

Usage

Build a new page

slate build <input> <output> [flags]

• input: Input Markdown file path.
• output: Output file path (e.g., pages/post.html).
• -f, --format: Output format: html (default), gemini, or gopher.
• -T, --template: Jinja2 HTML template file (required for html output).
• -t, --title: Optional title override; otherwise the first H1 is used.
• -d, --description: Optional meta description for the template.

Update an existing page

Slate remembers the source file and template used to generate an HTML file.

slate update <output_file>

• output_file: The existing HTML file to update.

You can still override the input or template if needed:

slate update output.html input.md -T new_template.html

Site Management (v0.2.0+)

Slate can now manage multi-page sites with auto-generated navigation and RSS feeds!

Create an index.md with categories:

---
categories: [blog, projects]
title: My Site
url: https://example.com
template: templates/default.html
---

Welcome to my site!

Create category root pages (blog.md, projects.md) and organize pages in directories:

your-site/
├── index.md
├── blog.md
├── blog/
│   ├── post1.md
│   └── post2.md
├── projects.md
└── projects/
    └── my-project.md

Then rebuild your entire site:

slate rebuild

This will:

• Build all pages with auto-generated navigation
• Generate RSS feeds for blog categories
• Create table of contents from headings
• Apply consistent templates across your site

Frontmatter (v0.2.0+)

Add YAML frontmatter to your Markdown files:

---
title: My Blog Post
description: A great post about things
template: templates/blog.html
category: blog
type: blog  # or "page"
date: 2024-12-01
author: Your Name
---

# Your content here

Frontmatter takes precedence over CLI arguments when both are present.

Dynamic Links

Slate supports "Dynamic Links" to keep your Markdown navigable on GitHub/Obsidian but working correctly on your site.

Use the [!MD-PAGE] token:

Check out my [!MD-PAGE] [Latest Post](posts/latest.md)

Slate converts this to:

Check out my <a href="posts/latest.html" class="content-link">Latest Post</a>

Template Variables

Your Jinja2 templates have access to these variables:

Variable	Description
{{ content }}	The rendered content (HTML, Gemtext, or Gopher).
{{ title }}	The page title.
{{ description }}	The page description.
{{ creation_date }}	Original creation date (persisted in metadata).
{{ creation_time }}	Original creation time (persisted in metadata).
{{ modify_date }}	Last modification date.
{{ modify_time }}	Last modification time.
{{ version }}	Slate version.
{{ nav_header }}	v0.2.0+ Header navigation (links to categories).
{{ nav_category }}	v0.2.0+ Category navigation (links to pages).
{{ category_name }}	v0.2.0+ Current category name.
{{ breadcrumbs }}	v0.2.0+ Breadcrumb navigation.
{{ toc }}	v0.2.0+ Auto-generated table of contents.

Why Slate?

Slate was created because many SSGs are needlessly complicated for me. Slate is a tiny tool that does one thing well: converts Markdown into accessible HTML (and other formats) using a template.

• No Config Files: Everything is CLI arguments or embedded metadata.
• Monolithic CSS: Designed to be used with a single CSS file.
• Hackable: The codebase is small and easy to extend. See documentation/hacking for details.

Documentation

• Architecture Guide
• Codebase Context

License

LGPL v3