zensical

name	zensical
last_updated	"2026-03-25T00:00:00.000Z"
version	0.0.x (alpha)
description	Zensical static site generator (successor to mkdocs-material). This skill should be used when authoring docs, writing zensical.toml, running uv/Docker preview, theming, or publishing to Pages.

Zensical Documentation

Modern static site generator by the makers of Material for MkDocs. Written in Rust and Python, published as a Python package. Uses zensical.toml (TOML) for configuration instead of mkdocs.yml (YAML), though legacy YAML is supported for migration.

Setup

Topic	Reference
Installation (pip, uv, Docker)	installation.md
Project config (zensical.toml, extensions)	project-config.md
Dev workflow (serve, build, CLI)	dev-workflow.md
Publishing (GitHub/GitLab Pages)	publishing.md
Navigation & site search	navigation-search.md
Theming & customization	theming.md

For CI/CD pipeline details, reference the /github or /gitlab-ci skills.

Authoring

Topic	Reference
Admonitions (callouts)	admonitions.md
Code blocks & content tabs	code-blocks-tabs.md
Grids (card & generic)	grids.md
Text formatting & buttons	formatting-text.md
Images, icons, diagrams, math	media-diagrams.md
Front matter, tags, tables, lists, footnotes, tooltips	metadata-elements.md

Plugins

Topic	Reference
Content reuse (Snippets, include-markdown substitute)	content-reuse.md
API documentation (mkdocstrings)	mkdocstrings.md

Migration from mkdocs-material

Config conversion from mkdocs.yml to zensical.toml, feature parity status, extension compatibility, theme overrides, analytics, and plugin substitutes.

• See migration.md

Key Differences from mkdocs-material

• Config format: TOML (zensical.toml) instead of YAML (mkdocs.yml)
• All settings scoped under [project]
• Theme variants: modern (new) or classic (Material-compatible)
• Icon prefix uses lucide/ by default (also supports fontawesome, material, octicons, simple-icons)
• Extensions configured via [project.markdown_extensions.<name>] TOML tables
• Sensible defaults: common extensions enabled automatically without explicit config
• Plugins configured via [project.plugins.<name>] TOML tables
• CLI commands: zensical new, zensical serve, zensical build
• Default dev server port: localhost:8000
• pymdownx.snippets replaces mkdocs-include-markdown for content reuse
• mkdocs-macros has no direct substitute; Zensical is developing a module system