Configuration

Everything Civet needs to know about your site lives in one file: civet.toml.

Civet is configured with a single TOML file at the root of your project. Sensible defaults mean you can publish with an empty config, then add settings as your site grows.

A complete example

# civet.toml
title        = "My Site"
base_url     = "https://example.com"
description  = "Notes on systems and software."
language     = "en"
theme        = "paperleaf"

[author]
name  = "Jane Doe"
email = "jane@example.com"

[build]
drafts      = false
minify      = true
output_dir  = "public"
incremental = true

[taxonomies]
tag    = "tags"
series = "series"

[permalinks]
posts = "/:year/:month/:slug/"

[[menu.main]]
name = "Home"
url  = "/"
[[menu.main]]
name = "Posts"
url  = "/posts/"
[[menu.main]]
name = "About"
url  = "/about/"

[markup.highlight]
theme    = "github-dark"
lineNos  = true

Site metadata

Key	Default	Description
`title`	—	Site title, used in `<title>` and feeds.
`base_url`	—	Canonical origin, used for absolute URLs and sitemap.
`description`	`""`	Short site description for SEO and OG tags.
`language`	`"en"`	Default language code; enables i18n when set.
`theme`	built-in	Name of a theme directory under `themes/`.

Build options

The [build] table controls how your site is rendered.

drafts — include draft posts (defaults to false; the dev server always shows drafts).
minify — minify HTML, CSS, and JS output.
incremental — only rebuild changed pages. Keep this on.
output_dir — where the built site is written.

Permalinks

Control URL structure per section with placeholders:

[permalinks]
posts = "/:year/:month/:slug/"
notes = "/notes/:slug/"

Available tokens: :year, :month, :day, :slug, :section, :filename.

Taxonomies

Define how content is grouped. Each entry maps a front-matter field to a URL prefix:

[taxonomies]
tag    = "tags"
series = "series"
author = "authors"

Environment variables

A few settings can be overridden at build time, handy for CI:

$ CIVET_BASE_URL=https://staging.example.com civet build

Edit this page on GitHub · Last updated July 8, 2026