Compared

Every generator turns a content tree into HTML. What differs is the language a page is written in, what ships inside the binary, and what you reach for a plugin to get.

The shape of each

Baudelaire is the row where the content language and the template language are the same language, and that is most of the difference below.

The page is a program

Markdown has no variables, no functions, and no way to read a file, so every generator built on it grows a second layer for the moment you want one. Zola and Hugo call it a shortcode, Eleventy a filter or a paired shortcode, Astro an MDX component.

<!-- Zola: templates/shortcodes/sales.html, then in the post -->
{{ sales(file="sales.csv") }}

In baudelaire the page is a Typst module, so the thing you would register is just a binding:

#let rows = csv("/data/sales.csv")

#table(
  columns: 2,
  table.header([Quarter], [Revenue]),
  ..rows.slice(1).flatten().map(c => [#c]),
)

Nothing is registered, nothing is discovered by directory name, and the failure mode is a compile error with a span rather than an empty div. The same applies to what Markdown ecosystems ship as plugins: math, figures with numbering, footnotes, bibliographies and cross references are Typst’s, not baudelaire’s.

Because a page compiles rather than expands, one source reaches more than one target. artifacts { pdf } typesets the same page as a document, and artifacts { cards } draws its social card with a Typst template, both from the page you already wrote.

What ships in the box

The last row is the trade. Baudelaire has no plugin interface: a capability is either a switch in config.kdl, a Typst package you import, or a command in hooks { }. That keeps the binary one file and the config exhaustive, and it means a capability nobody has built does not exist yet.

Builds

Baudelaire keeps an on-disk cache under .baudelaire/ and rebuilds a page when something that page actually read changed: its own source, an import, an asset it named, a permalink one of its links resolves to. See incremental builds. Zola rebuilds from cold every run. Hugo caches processed resources but recompiles pages. Eleventy has --incremental, Astro leans on Vite’s cache.

A warm build here is proportional to what you touched, not to how many pages you have. A cold one is a full Typst compile per page, which is slower per page than a Markdown parse, so a first build of thousands of pages is not where baudelaire wins.

What you give up

Markdown as the primary format. A .md file under content/ is a page, with frontmatter in YAML, TOML or KDL, so an existing corpus builds as it stands. But Typst is the format the rest of the tool is shaped around: a .md page is lowered to Typst before it compiles, and anything Typst does that Markdown has no spelling for is reached through a fenced typ block rather than natively. See Markdown to Typst.

Maturity of the target. Typst’s HTML export is the newest part of Typst, and baudelaire pins one Typst version at a time. A page that leans on paged layout (columns, placement, page breaks) has no HTML meaning, and an upgrade can move the emitted markup.

The ecosystem. Four themes ship, there is no theme marketplace, no shortcode registry, and no plugin API. Typst’s own package registry is available to pages and templates, which covers a lot of the gap for content but nothing for the build.

PostCSS. Sass compiles in the build, assets { tailwind } generates the utility sheet, and assets { minify } runs the result through Lightning CSS. There is no PostCSS step, and no LESS or Stylus: run those from hooks { before }.

HTML minification. html { pretty } controls indentation, not size. Nothing strips the markup.

Components and islands. Client JavaScript is yours to write and gets bundled. There is no component model, no framework integration, no server rendering.

Pick something else if

• Your site is really an application: interactive UI, framework components, SSR.
• Non-technical authors write the content and expect a CMS.
• You need a theme you can install today rather than a layout you write.

Ready to move a site? There is a page per source: Zola, Hugo, Jekyll or Eleventy.