Zensical Static Site Generatorλ︎

A scalable Open Source systems for technical writing that always keep you in the flow

Zensical is a Rust & Python tools for generating documentation sites from Markdown (potentially Common Mark in future).

Zensical is a very efficient tool that generates a site from Markdown within a few seconds (an order of magnitude faster than most generator tools).

Zensical is a rapidly evolving tool that aims to be feature comparable with Material for MkDocs by the end of 2026.

zensical.toml is used to configure a project, defining plugins and navigation for the website.

NOTE: Zensical is a reimplementation and extension of Material for MkDocs and MkDocs itself.

Install Zensicalλ︎

Zensical can be installed locally via vu or pip. Practicalli uses uv for simplicity.

UV Python Package Manager is used to install Zensical as a tool, negating the need for a Python Virtual environment

Zensical commands are wrapped in Makefile tasks to provide a consistent and simple command line experience.

Install the latest version of Zensical as a tool using uv (updating if there is a new version).

MakefileCommand

make docs-install

uv tool install zensical --with catppuccin-zensical --upgrade

Create a new Zensical project with zensical new ..

Or clone an existing repository that contains a Zensical project.

MakefileCommand

Build the website and serve locally at http://localhost:7777

make docs

Run Zensical from the root of the project, optionally specifying a host and port to run the web server hosting the site locally.

zensical serve --dev-addr localhost:7777

All plugins are defined within the zensical.toml configuration for the project.

catppuccin-zensical theme is the only plugin currently used by Practicalli projects.