SteelSky is a "no BS" minimalist static site generator built for small personal websites and blogs.
- Build with an intuitive mix of Markdown and HTML
- Full TypeScript support
- Simple templating system
- Automatic RSS feed
- 100% vanilla TS/JS
npm install -g steelskyλ steelsky
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Usage: steelsky [options] [command]
CLI for SteelSky - Static Site Generator
Options:
-V, --version output the version number
-h, --help display help for command
Commands:
build <inputDir> <outputDir> Build the static site
init <targetDir> Copy the skeleton files to a new directory for quick project setup
help [command] display help for command
A very minimal site structure looks like this:
site/
chrome/
header.html
footer.html
content/
favicon.ico
index.md
templates/
ssconfig.jsonA typical site structure might look something like this:
site/
chrome/
header.html
footer.html
content/
css/
site.css
font/
font.css
img/
img.png
logo.png
js/
script.ts
posts/
post1.md
post2.md
about.md
favicon.ico
index.md
posts.md
templates/
my_template.md
my_template.css
my_template.ts
types/
SSTypes.ts
ssconfig.json
tsconfig.jsonThe site "chrome" is the header and footer content which is automatically added to every single page.
These two files go in ./chrome.
You don't need to worry about setting up your actual <head> element since SteelSky will handle that for you.
Use this file to set up things like sticky headers, navigation etc.
Use this file to set up your footer info and layout.
Template definitions are .md files places in site/templates/.
Templates are reusable code blocks which can take optional parameters to fill in their data. A template might look like this:
My template: {{ content }}Where {{ content }} represents a string which will be replaced by the content parameter.
A more advanced template might look like this:
<!-- ./templates/my_template.md -->
<div class="my-template">
{{ content = "no content" }}
</div>
<script>
for (let i = 0; i < Number({{ count = 3 }}); i++) {
console.log(i);
}
</script>
<style>
body {
padding: 3rem;
}
</style>Notes:
- Each parameter has a default value which will be used if none is provided.
- All values are strings, so numbers must be converted.
Template files may include inline CSS and JS. However this will be duplicated each time the element is included on the page. Sometimes this is what you want, but often its better to write <template>.css and <template>.js files which will be included only once on a page where the template is used.
It is also possible for the <template>.md file to include JS & CSS in addition to that which is included in the corresponding .js and .css files.
In any ./content/*.md file you can include a template into the page with this syntax:
```/my_template
content="my content!"
count="5"
}}
```This will be replaced with the processed template content before the page is rendered from markdown to HTML.
You can also access front matter with the syntax:
```/front:title```SteelSky can automatically compile TS files. Just add a tsconfig.json to the root of the site data and set compileTS: true in the config.
See the skeleton projects for an example tsconfig.json.
The ./ssconfig.json file is what you use to configure your SteelSky site.
An example config might look like:
{
"baseURL": "http://localhost:3002",
"siteTitle": "SteelSky Demo",
"siteDescription": "SteelSky Demo Site",
"siteImage": "/img/icon.png",
"highlightStyle": "a11y-dark",
"compileTs": true,
"directoryIndex": false
}Note: The baseURL is for generating social media links and RSS feeds. You probably don't need to change it for local development.
By default every markdown page builds to a .html file (content/faq.md → output/faq.html, URL /faq.html). Set "directoryIndex": true to instead build non-index.md pages into a directory so each page is served at a clean directory URL:
| Content file | URL (default) | URL (directoryIndex: true) |
|---|---|---|
content/faq.md |
/faq.html |
/faq/ |
content/dolos/manual.md |
/dolos/manual.html |
/dolos/manual/ |
content/posts/post1.md |
/posts/post1.html |
/posts/post1/ |
- Opt-in and default off, so existing sites are untouched.
index.mdfiles are untouched:content/index.md→output/index.html, section indexes likecontent/dolos/index.md→output/dolos/index.html.pageMeta.path,listing.json, and the RSS feed follow the new scheme automatically.- If
content/foo.mdandcontent/foo/index.mdboth exist they would both map tooutput/foo/index.html; the directory index wins andfoo.mdis skipped. - The section index page (
content/posts/index.md→/posts/index.html) is never listed as a post in the RSS feed or the client-side posts listing. - Internal links in your
content/,chrome/, andtemplates/that point at.htmlURLs must be updated by hand to the new directory URLs (/faq.html→/faq/).
Each page on the site take optional front matter:
```/front
title=Page Title
description=A short description
image=/img/page-image.png
date=2026-01-01
```SteelSky also calculates some additional metadata about the page. This metadata (including the page front matter) is available on the window object as pageMeta.
SteelSky automatically generates a ./listing.json file which includes metadata about the entire site.
This file can be fetched and used by scripts as needed.
[
{
"title": "about",
"description": "the about page for this site",
"image": "/img/icon.png",
"date": "2026-03-23T17:55:25.350Z",
"path": "/about.html",
"ext": ".html"
},
{
"title": "site.css",
"description": "",
"image": "",
"date": "2026-03-23T17:55:25.417Z",
"path": "/css/site.css",
"ext": ".css"
},
{
"title": "favicon.ico",
"description": "",
"image": "",
"date": "2026-03-23T17:55:25.417Z",
"path": "/favicon.ico",
"ext": ".ico"
},
...
]