Laurel

A static site generator that consumes Ghost themes and Markdown content from a Git repository and emits a fully static site. No CMS, no server, no database.

content/*.md   ─┐
                ├─►  laurel build  ─►  dist/  (HTML + CSS + JS + assets)
themes/casper/ ─┘

Designed around four pillars:

1. Ghost theme compatibility — drop a real Ghost theme (e.g. the official Source) into your project, and Laurel renders it.
2. Markdown + Git content — your posts and pages are versioned Markdown files with YAML frontmatter.
3. Static-only runtime — the output is plain files. Host on anything.
4. Optional components — search, RSS, sitemaps, OG images, comments — opt in by config; not core.

Plus migration tooling: laurel import-ghost ghost-export.json converts a Ghost admin JSON export into Markdown content, and laurel import-hugo / laurel import-jekyll provide conservative Markdown-post imports from existing static sites. The supported migration paths are documented in docs/MIGRATION.md.

Status

Bootstrap in progress. See docs/DESIGN.md for the full architecture, docs/admin-dashboard.md for the local file-backed Admin design direction, VERSIONING.md for the SemVer, public API, and theme-compatibility policy, docs/GHOST_COMPATIBILITY.md for the helper coverage matrix, docs/THEME_DEV.md for the theme developer handbook (helpers, partials, locales, asset fingerprinting, golden snapshot tests), docs/theme-reference.md for the machine-checked helper inventory plus content-shape index, docs/api.md for the static Content API contract plus docs/EXAMPLE_SPA.md for a minimal @tryghost/content-api SPA consumer, and docs/MIGRATION.md for the Ghost Admin export -> Markdown migration path, and docs/migration/ghost.md for the step-by-step guide to moving a real blog off Ghost. If your Ghost site uses Members / Portal, read docs/MEMBERS.md for what does and doesn't translate to a static build, plus wiring examples for Buttondown / Beehiiv / Substack.

Install

Laurel is distributed on npm. It runs on the Bun runtime, so install Bun >= 1.3 first, then install the CLI globally:

npm i -g @t09tanaka/laurel
laurel --help

Or run it without a global install:

bunx @t09tanaka/laurel --help

To update an existing install, laurel upgrade detects how Laurel was installed (npm i -g, bun install -g, or bunx) and runs the matching command. Release operator notes live in docs/release.md.

Quickstart

Requires Bun >= 1.3 to run Laurel.

bun install
bun run build
cd example && bun ../src/cli/index.ts build
open example/dist/index.html

Tutorials

Copy-pasteable walkthroughs for the common starting points — each one is self-contained and ends with something running locally.

1. Start a blog from scratch
2. Migrate from Ghost in 10 minutes
3. Customise the Source theme
4. Deploy to Cloudflare / Vercel / Netlify / Firebase Hosting / GitHub Pages
5. Write your first plugin

Index: docs/tutorials/.

Once a site is live, see docs/security/hosting.md for the Content-Security-Policy, Strict-Transport-Security, and related HTTP header snippets each host needs — Laurel emits static files, so these are the host's job.

For build-time expectations, scaling guidance, recommended cache headers, image limits, and a manual 1k-post benchmark, see docs/PERFORMANCE.md.

Accepting PRs against content/ or themes/? Read docs/security/threat-model.md first. It documents which frontmatter fields (codeinjection_*, feature_image_caption, unsafe_html, slug) and config fields (site.url, theme.custom.*, build.allow_code_injection) carry which level of trust, and what to look for in a contributor's diff.

Layout

src/        # SSG implementation (cli, content, theme, render, build, ghost, config)
tests/      # bun test suite mirroring src/
docs/       # Design notes
example/    # Reference blog: content + laurel.toml + vendored Ghost themes (Source, Casper)
examples/   # Deploy snippets and (planned) starter site templates — see examples/README.md

Community

• Questions / how-do-I: GitHub Discussions → Q&A
• Show off a site or theme you built: Discussions → Show and tell
• Propose a feature or bounce an idea: Discussions → Ideas
• Releases and project-wide notices: Discussions → Announcements
• Reproducible bugs: open an issue
• Security vulnerabilities: see SECURITY.md — please don't file public issues
• Code of Conduct: this project follows the Contributor Covenant 2.1

Picking the right venue gets you a faster answer and keeps the issue tracker scannable. See .github/SUPPORT.md for the long version.

License

MIT.

Third-party themes

This repository vendors two official Ghost themes for use as reference fixtures and compatibility targets:

• example/themes/source/ — the Source theme
• example/themes/casper/ — the Casper theme

Both are © Ghost Foundation and distributed under the MIT License. Their respective LICENSE files are retained inside each theme directory, as the license requires. Laurel's own MIT license does not extend to these vendored themes; they remain under their upstream license.