v1.4.0 · Now with incremental rebuilds

Build websites at the speed of thought

Civet is a blazing-fast static site generator written in Go. Write Markdown, get a polished website — zero-config defaults, fully themeable, with instant hot reload.

curl -sSf https://civet.skin/install.sh | sh

Everything you need, nothing you don't

Civet ships with sensible defaults so you can publish in minutes, then grows with you.

Sub-millisecond builds

Incremental rebuilds mean a 1,000-page site renders in under 50 ms. Edit, save, refresh — it's already done.

🔥

Instant hot reload

The dev server watches your files and live-reloads the browser the instant you save. No manual refresh.

📝

Markdown + shortcodes

Author in Markdown or MDX. Compose reusable content with a library of built-in shortcodes, or write your own.

🎨

Themes & templating

Go templates give you full control. Drop in a community theme or hand-roll every pixel — your call.

🌍

i18n & taxonomies

First-class multi-language sites, tags, categories, and series out of the box. Localized URLs included.

📦

Single binary

One static binary, no runtime dependencies. Deploy to any host — Netlify, Cloudflare Pages, or a $4 VPS.

From zero to published in 60 seconds

No boilerplate, no lock-in. Three commands and your site is live.

# install the binary $ curl -sSf https://civet.skin/install.sh | sh # scaffold a new site $ civet new my-blog $ cd my-blog # start the dev server $ civet serve listening on http://localhost:1414 ready in 38 ms
// content/posts/hello.md --- title: "Hello, Civet" date: 2026-07-08 tags: [intro] --- # My first post Civet renders this **Markdown** into clean HTML, fast. ![alt](/img/cover.png)

Front matter is TOML or YAML. Images are automatically optimized and served in modern formats.

Fast. Measurably.

Build time for a 1,000-page site with images, on an M2 MacBook Air.

GeneratorLanguageCold buildIncremental
Civet 1.4Go418 ms12 ms
HugoGo612 ms34 ms
ZolaRust540 ms28 ms
EleventyJS11.2 s820 ms
GatsbyJS42.7 s3.4 s

Benchmarks are indicative, run on identical hardware, Nov 2025. See the benchmark repo.

Trusted by builders

From personal blogs to docs sites with 10k+ pages.

nullbyte.dev Paperleaf Docs Kernelnotes the morning brew Ferrite Labs Indie Hackers CN pixelfed.blog Rust Cairo Book

Ship your next site today

Free, open-source, and 100% yours. No accounts, no telemetry, no lock-in.

Read the docs →