# zensical/zensical

A modern static site generator by the Material for MkDocs team

Repository: https://github.com/zensical/zensical
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/zensical
Homepage: https://zensical.org/docs/
Language: Rust
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: documentation, static-site-generator
Last push: 2026-08-21T20:41:48+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 85/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 98, release rhythm 98, longevity 33
- inputs: {"age_days": 472, "days_push": 12, "days_rel": 12, "gap_med": 4, "n_releases_24m": 54}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 5568, forks 130 (observed 2026-08-28T04:09:22.435838+00:00)

## What it is
Zensical is a modern static site generator for building documentation sites from Markdown, created by the Material for MkDocs team. It is written in Rust for speed and ships as a Python package and Docker image, with built-in search and multi-language support.

## Use cases
- generate a documentation site from markdown files
- build searchable docs for an open source project
- replace mkdocs with a faster static site generator
- create a professional project website in minutes
- host multi-language documentation for a commercial product

## When to choose
- you want Material for MkDocs-style docs with better performance
- your documentation builds are slow with Python-based generators
- you need built-in search and internationalization out of the box

## When to avoid
- you need a mature ecosystem with years of plugin support
- your project depends on MkDocs plugins not yet compatible with Zensical
- you need a general-purpose website builder rather than a docs-focused tool

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: active
- function: static-site-generator, documentation, search-engine, markdown
- domain: documentation, web-development, developer-tools
- platform: cross-platform, cli, python, rust
- tags: mkdocs, material-for-mkdocs, docs-as-code, markdown, static-site, docker

## Member repositories
- zensical/zensical (main) score 85

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:22.435838+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:55:36.558489+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/zensical/zensical (fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:22.435838+00:00, sha 9c574b28347f)
  - homepage: https://zensical.org/docs/ (fetched 2026-08-29T08:50:42.545378+00:00, sha 38a8a4e8b204)
  - registry_crates: https://crates.io/api/v1/crates/zensical (fetched 2026-08-29T08:50:42.554349+00:00, sha 6611a9bc5a0e)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.