Markdown in, website out.

Free and open source static site generator written in Go — themes, live reload and RSS, no bundler or lockfile. This page is kite output.

Quickstart View on GitHub

Features

Blazing builds: pages compile in single-digit milliseconds — the whole site before your finger leaves Enter
Zero dependencies: one go install, no Node, no bundler, no lockfile
Plain-HTML themes: two template files in standard Go html/template — nothing new to learn
Live reload: kite serve watches content, themes and config and refreshes your browser — see the CLI
RSS included: feed.xml regenerates on every build, zero plugins
Table of contents: headings parsed into structured data — render a sidebar, a dropdown, or nothing
10 built-in themes: from gruvbox to tufte — browse below
Open source: free, source on GitHub — why it exists

Docs

Install & build: go install github.com/HimanshuSardana/kite@latest, then kite init, kite build, kite serve — full quickstart
Why kite exists · philosophy — read
CLI reference · reference — read
Building themes · guide · themes — read
Writing posts · guide · markdown — read
Quickstart · guide · install — read

# install $ go install github.com/HimanshuSardana/kite@latest # scaffold + write $ kite init && hx content/hello.md # build + preview → http://localhost:8000 $ kite build && kite serve

Themes

modern-light, modern-dark, modern-dark-2, catppuccin — clean defaults
gruvbox, everforest, rose-pine, terminal-gruvbox — terminal palettes
tufte, magical — editorial and playful
Preview any of them with kite serve <name> — browse source

Benchmarks

No build daemon, no cache to warm — kite re-parses and re-renders the whole site on every run. Measured end to end with go test ./internal/build -bench . -benchmem.

0.09ms

to parse one Markdown post and render it to HTML

45ms

to build a 100-post site from scratch

230ms

to build a 500-post site — about 0.5 ms per page

12MB

single static binary (stripped) — no runtime or lockfile

Benchmarks run on an Intel i5-8250U (2017 laptop), averaged over multiple iterations. Source: internal/build/bench_test.go. Run go test ./internal/build -bench . -benchmem to reproduce on your own hardware.

FAQ

Is kite free?

Yes — free and open source. Grab it with go install (needs Go 1.25+). The output is plain static HTML, hostable anywhere.

Why another static site generator?

Hugo is powerful but brings its own templating world; JS frameworks burn 100MB of RAM to render Markdown. Kite is the smallest tool that does the job — full story here.

Can I bring my own theme?

Yes — home.html + layout.html in standard Go template syntax. This page is a custom theme — guide here.

Does it do RSS? Drafts? Taxonomies?

RSS yes, every build. Drafts yes — draft: true hides a post until you build with --drafts. Taxonomies: not yet — if you need those today, Hugo is the honest recommendation.

I found a bug / want a feature?

Open an issue or pull request on GitHub.