Picogen, your suckless static site generator

I'm excited to announce the release of Picogen 1.0, a static site generator that mentally challenges the complexity of modern minimalistic web tooling. It is used as a daily driver on couple of webs for 4 years, including the one hosting this article. Picogen proves that powerful doesn't have to mean complicated.

Why Another Static Site Generator?

I started this project because I was frustrated with the complexity of existing generators. Hugo and Jekyll were powerful, but their codebases were so large that understanding and modifying them was nearly impossible for most users. I wanted something transparent, hackable, and truly yours to customize. Inspired by the simplicity of Makesite but aiming for real-world usability, I set out to create a generator that would be both minimal and practical. The challenge was to pack all features my friends needed into a 500 lines of code.

Key Features

*Dual Protocol Support**: Picogen generates both HTML websites and Gemini capsules from the same Markdown source. Write once, publish to both the web and the Small web.

*Flexible Taxonomy System**: Organize content with tags, categories, series, or create your own custom taxonomies. Picogen automatically generates indexes, counts, and navigation for any taxonomy you define.

*Automatic Feeds and Sitemaps**: RSS/Atom feeds and XML sitemaps are generated automatically.

*Template Inheritance**: Simple yet powerful templating with variable substitution and single-level inheritance keeps your templates DRY without complexity.

*Zero Config to Full Control**: Run `python picogen.py --init` for a working site in seconds, or dive deep into config.json for complete customization. The choice is yours.

Built for Hackers

Picogen embraces the Unix philosophy: do one thing well, be transparent, and play nice with other tools. The entire codebase is commented and designed to be read. If you want to modify how it works, you can - because you'll actually understand the code.

Get Started

Getting started takes less than a minute:

git clone https://github.com/ethael/picogen.git
cd picogen
pip install -r requirements.txt
python picogen.py --init
python picogen.py --generate http 
python picogen.py --serve http

Picogen is MIT licensed and available now on GitHub. Whether you're building a personal blog, documentation site, or Gemini capsule, Picogen offers the simplicity and power you need without the bloat you often don't. Please give it a try! I would love to hear your feedback.

2025 Marian Mizik | License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 | marian at mizik dot sk | marian_mizik@bsd.network (mastodon)