metalsmith/metalsmith

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

7824 stars · 607 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

Metalsmith is an extremely simple, pluggable static site generator for Node.js that converts a source directory of files into JavaScript objects, manipulates them through a chain of plugins, and writes the results to a destination directory. It works like a library rather than a framework, letting developers compose functionality from plugins for markdown, layouts, collections, permalinks, and more.

Use cases

• generate a static site or blog from markdown files
• convert markdown to html with templating layouts
• build a jamstack website with custom permalinks and collections
• scaffold project files with a custom generator tool
• create a static documentation site
• build a deploy-ready static site for Netlify or GitHub Pages

When to choose

• you want full control over your static site build pipeline with a library-like API
• you prefer composing small, focused plugins over a monolithic framework
• you work in the Node.js ecosystem and want to use npm, markdown, yaml, and your own templating language
• you need a simple tool for scaffolding, generating, or transforming directory trees of files

When to avoid

• you want a batteries-included static site generator with built-in content management like Hugo or Jekyll
• you need server-side rendering of a dynamic JavaScript application
• you prefer convention-over-configuration with minimal setup
• you need a non-JavaScript toolchain

Facets

library · maturity stable

static-site-generator templating markdown cli plugin-system web-development developer-tools documentation cli cross-platform ssg jamstack markdown-to-html pluggable-pipeline blog-generator static-site-generator nodejs

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="metalsmith/metalsmith")